Experimental verification of gravitational interaction of bodies immersed in fluids

Abstract

This article deals with the experimental verification of the generalized Newton's gravitational law, formulated by Z. Horák. According to this law, the gravitational force between two resting homogeneous bodies immersed in resting homogeneous fluids is dependent on the densitiesρ ₁,ρ ₂ of both the bodies and densitiesρ′₁,ρ′₂ of both the fluids: furthermore,F′=(1−ρ′₁/ρ ₁)(1−ρ′₂/ρ ₂)F=h ₁ h ₂ F, whereF is the force between the bodies in a vacuum andh ₁,h ₂ are the density factors. The aim of the experimental verification of the law was to determine the density factors by exploring the phenomenon that is influenced by the gravitational interaction of the bodies immersed in different fluids.

The dynamic torsion-balance method was applied, during which the period of swinging of the torsion pendulum in the gravitational field of two cast iron spheres in the water.The swings of the pendulum suspended on a torsion filament in a vacuum chamber were measured in three regimes: (1) without the spheres, (2) with the spheres in the air, (3) with the spheres in the water. The motion of the pendulum was scanned by a laser ray, the period of the swing was measured electronically. The density factor determined by the dynamic torsion-balance method was 0.8562±0.0035, whereas the same factor determined by direct calculation from the densities was 0.8542±0.0003. Thus, with the relative error of 0.4%, the validity of Horák's gravitational law was proved.