Abstract
Most of our analysis so far has used point masses. Now we ask whether the sizes of objects affect their gravitational interaction. For the source of gravity, size does not matter if the object is spherically symmetric (see Sect. 2.3). For the target of gravity, however, size does matter because gravity pulls harder on one side of the target than on the other. Newton studied this problem and realized that variations in the Moon’s gravity across the Earth’s surface would “squeeze” the oceans and create the tides. This phenomenon is therefore known as the tidal force, and it has a variety of interesting consequences.
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Notes
- 1.
Think of repeatedly bending a paper clip back and forth.
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Keeton, C. (2014). Tidal Forces. In: Principles of Astrophysics. Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9236-8_5
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