Newton's Inverse Square Law

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Newton's second law of motion doesn't tell us what Saturn does moving around the sun, okay? To understand that, we need another equation. The other equation is the equation that tells us what force is actually acting on the object. And that is Newton's inverse square law. So f equals ma, which also equals gm1, m2 over r squared times e vector. That means you can cancel out the m2. You can use calculus to solve for the entire motion of Saturn around the sun using that input.

My little pandemic-lockdown contribution to the world was a series of videos called The Biggest Ideas in the Universe. The idea was to explain physics in a pedagogical way, concentrating on established ideas rather than speculations, with the twist that I tried to include and explain any equations that seemed useful, even though no prior mathematical knowledge was presumed. I’m in the process of writing a series of three books inspired by those videos, and the first one is coming out now: The Biggest Ideas In The Universe: Space, Time, and Motion. For this solo episode I go through one of the highlights from the book: explaining the mathematical and physical basis of Einstein’s equation of general relativity, relating mass and energy to the curvature of spacetime. Hope it works!

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