The Earth’s Gravitational Field

The Earth has a gravitational field that exerts a force on objects both on it and around it

Students learn to:

• define weight as the force on an object due to a gravitational field explain that a change in gravitational potential energy is related to work done
• Explain that a change in gravitational potential energy is related to work done
• define gravitational potential energy as the work done to move an object from a very large distance away to a point in a gravitational field

Students:

• perform an investigation and gather information to determine a value for acceleration due to gravity using pendulum motion or computer assisted technology and identify reason for possible variations from the value 9.8 ms^-2
• gather secondary information to predict the value of acceleration due to gravity on other planets
• analyse information using the expression:

  to determine the weight force for a body on Earth and for the same body on other planets