As we have learnt, the phenomenon of gravitation was discovered by Sir Isaac Newton. As the story goes, he discovered the force by seeing an apple fall from a tree on the ground. He wondered why all apples fall vertically downward and not at an angle to the vertical. Why do they not fly off in a horizontal direction? After much thought, he came to the conclusion that the earth must be attracting the apple towards itself and this attractive force must be directed towards the center of the earth. The direction from the apple on the tree to the center of the earth is the vertical direction at the position of the apple and thus, the apple falls vertically downwards. GravitationalforceMoon.Falling Earthapple1.1 Concept of the gravitational force and the gravitational force between the earth and the moon.Figure 1.1 on the left shows an apple tree on the earth. The force on an apple on the tree is towards the center of the earth i.e. along the perpendicular from the position of the apple to the surface of the earth. The Figure also shows the gravitational force between the earth and the moon. The distances in the figure are not according to scale.Newton thought that if the force of gravitation acts on apples on the tree at different heights from the surface of the earth, can it also act on objects at even greater heights, much farther away from the earth, like for example, the moon? Can it act on even farther objects like the other planets and the Sun?
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