- Home
- Standard 11
- Physics
Obtain an expression of acceleration produced by gravity of earth.
Solution

Imagined a earth to be a sphere made of a large number of concentric spherical shells with the smallest one at the centre and the largest one at its surface.
A point outside the earth is outside all the shells.
Thus, all the shells exert a gravitational force at the point outside just as if their masses are concentrated at their common centre.
For a point inside the earth, the situation is different. This is illustrated in figure.
Consider the earth to be made up of concentric shells.
A point mass $m$ is situated at a distance $r\left(r<\mathrm{R}_{\mathrm{E}}\right)$ from the centre.
The point $P$ lies outside the sphere of radius $r$.
For the shells of radius greater than $r$, the point $P$ lies inside. Hence, no gravitational force exert on mass $m$ kept at $\mathrm{P}$.
If mass of particle is $m$ at $\mathrm{P}$, mass of sphere $m_{r}$ with radius $r$, then the force on the mass $m$ at $P$ has a magnitude of force,
$\mathrm{F}=\frac{\mathrm{G} m \mathrm{M}_{r}}{r^{2}}$
We assume that the entire earth is of uniform density.
Hence its mass is $\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{E}}=\left(\frac{4}{3} \pi \mathrm{R}_{\mathrm{E}}^{3}\right) \rho$
$\therefore \frac{4}{3} \pi \rho=\frac{\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{E}}}{\mathrm{R}_{\mathrm{E}}^{3}}$
$\ldots(2)$
But $\mathrm{M}_{r}=\frac{4}{3} \pi r^{3} \rho$
$\ldots(3)$