What happens to the weight of an object when it is taken to a height equal to the radius of the Earth?
Practice Questions
1 question
Q1
What happens to the weight of an object when it is taken to a height equal to the radius of the Earth?
It becomes zero
It is halved
It is doubled
It remains the same
At a height equal to the radius of the Earth, the weight is halved due to the inverse square law of gravitation.
Questions & Step-by-step Solutions
1 item
Q
Q: What happens to the weight of an object when it is taken to a height equal to the radius of the Earth?
Solution: At a height equal to the radius of the Earth, the weight is halved due to the inverse square law of gravitation.
Steps: 6
Step 1: Understand that weight is the force of gravity acting on an object.
Step 2: Know that gravity decreases with distance from the center of the Earth.
Step 3: The radius of the Earth is the distance from the center of the Earth to its surface.
Step 4: When you go to a height equal to the radius of the Earth, you are now 2 times the radius away from the center of the Earth.
Step 5: According to the inverse square law, if you double the distance from the center of the Earth, the gravitational force (and thus weight) becomes one-fourth of what it was at the surface.
Step 6: However, at this height, you are still experiencing some gravity, which is half of the weight you had at the surface.
