Inverse Square Law Quotes

Every particle of matter is attracted by or gravitates to every other particle of matter with a force inversely proportional to the squares of their distances.

Gravity must be caused by an Agent acting constantly according to certain laws, but whether this Agent be material or immaterial I have left to the consideration of my readers.

Gravitation is, so far, not understandable in terms of other phenomena.

You think Earth's gravity is really something when you're climbing the stairs. But, as far as physics goes, it is a pipsqueak, infinitesimal, tiny little effect.

Bullialdus wrote that all force respecting ye Sun as its center & depending on matter must be reciprocally in a duplicate ratio of ye distance from ye center.

Mr Hooke sent, in his next letter [to Sir Isaac Newton] the whole of his Hypothesis, scil that the gravitation was reciprocall to the square of the distance: ... This is the greatest Discovery in Nature that ever was since the World's Creation. It was never so much as hinted by any man before. I wish he had writt plainer, and afforded a little more paper.

We know there is gravity because apples fall from trees. We can observe gravity in daily life. If we could throw an apple to the edge of the universe, we would observe it accelerating.

Do not Bodies act upon Light at a distance, and by their action bend its Rays; and is not this action (caeteris paribus) [all else being equal] strongest at the least distance?

Gravitational and electromagnetic interactions are long-range interactions, meaning they act on objects no matter how far they are separated from each other.

Thus far I have explained the phenomena of the heavens and of our sea by the force of gravity, but I have not yet assigned a cause to gravity. Indeed, this force arises from some cause that penetrates as far as the centers of the sun and planets without any diminution of its power to act, and that acts not in proportion to the quantity of the surfaces of the particles on which it acts (as mechanical causes are wont to do) but in proportion to the quantity of solid matter, and whose action is extended everywhere to immense distances, always decreasing as the squares of the distances.

The classical example of a successful research programme is Newton's gravitational theory: possibly the most successful research programme ever.

If two stones were placed... near each other, and beyond the sphere of influence of a third cognate body, these stones, like two magnetic needles, would come together in the intermediate point, each approaching the other by a space proportional to the comparative mass of the other.

The first amazing fact about gravitation is that the ratio of inertial mass to gravitational mass is constant wherever we have checked it. The second amazing thing about gravitation is how weak it is.

I have explained the phenomena of the heavens and of our sea by the force of gravity, but I have not yet assigned a cause to gravity.

The moon is not kept in her orbit round the earth, nor the earth in her orbit round the sun, by a force that varies merely in the inverse ratio of the squares of the distances.

Gravitation is the lust of the cosmos.