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PhysicsBowl 2019 Q7


7) This question asks us to find the change in weight when a 100 kg person moved from sea level to an altitude of 5000 meters.

Where F[g] is the gravitational force, G is the gravitation constant, m is mass, and r is distance between their center of masses

This is Newton's law of universal gravitation, which describes the gravitational force between two objects. In this case, the two objects are the Earth and the man. This means the radius r, should be measured from the center of the Earth, not from the surface.


All of the values we need are either given in the problem or on the PhysicsBowl constant sheet. Remember that we want the difference in the gravitational force. Since G, m[1], and m[2] will all be constant, we can factor them out. For radius r, we will have 2 values, r[1] will be the radius of the Earth, while r[2] is r[1] + 5000.

Where F[g] is the gravitational force, G is the gravitation constant, m is mass, and r is distance between their center of masses

Answer: C

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