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Newton's and Gauss's Laws of Gravitation

Consider a spherical shell of material of uniform density, with radius R and total mass M.

  1. Calculate the acceleration due to gravity inside the shell using Gauss's Law.
  2. Redo the calculation using Newton's point-mass formula.
  3. Calculate the acceleration due to gravity outside the shell using Gauss's Law.


Bryan J. Mendez
Fri Aug 27 17:24:54 PDT 1999