Non-Inertial Reference Frame Gravitational attraction The Law of Universal Attraction was already introduced in lecture D1. The law postulates that the force of attraction between any two particles, of masses M and m, respectively, has a magnitude, F, given by F= (1) where r is the distance between the two particles, and G is the universal constant of gravitation. The value of G is empirically determined to be
In lecture D2 we introduced the position velocity and acceleration vectors and referred them to a fixed cartesian coordinate system. While it is clear that the choice of coordinate system does not affect the final answer, we shall see that, in practical problems, the choice of a specific system may simplify the calculations considerably. In previous lectures, all the vectors at all points in the trajectory were expressed in the
