Recent content by Ebenshap

Thanks MrAnchovy, You're right, my interest in this is historical. I suppose I meant to say that I would like to study the earliest recording that I could easily get on my kindle. At first it seemed to me the proof was to show that unequal ratios exist. And that to me seems unnecessary to...

Hi, I wanted to see if I could understand Archimedes' proof for the area of a sphere directly from one of his texts. Almost right away I was confused by the language. Archimedes lists a bunch of propositions that eventually lead up to the 25th proposition where the area of the sphere is finally...

I want a better visual model of what Newton's gravitational force formula represents: (G⋅m1⋅m2)/d2 But there are two contradictory things that I'm having trouble reconciling: Multiplying the two masses shows a relationship between the two point sources, but using the area of the sphere to...

Thanks HallsofIvy for the explanation. It looks like the 4π would only cancel out if it were being compared to another sphere and both spheres had the same source or two different sources of the same amount.

Thank you for the clarification axmls. I think I get it now. Let me test out my understanding. Since the 1/4π is a constant, the original Newton formula simplifies the equation by factoring it out and making it a part of G. And so when Cavendish did his experiment to find the gravitational...

Hi Chandra, I'm interested in gravity in particular, because in the Newton formula for gravitational force the 4π is not there. To me, it makes it harder to explain in laymen terms the purpose of the inverse square aspect of the formula if the entire area of the sphere formula is not present...

I also found this link from the Georgia State University site where they depict the gravitational force formula being something like this: 4π(G⋅m1⋅m2)/4πd2 Please check out the link: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/forces/isq.html#isqg it seems to suggest that the 4π cancels out...

Hi axmls, I was thinking of the gravitational formula in particular: (G⋅m1⋅m2)/d2 I'm just wondering what happens to the 4π part. Why isn't it written as something like this: (G⋅m1⋅m2)/4πd2

I almost understand how the inverse square law is derived from the area of sphere equation, 4πr2, but I'm not quite clear on what happens to the 4π. I found one equation that seemed to say that the intensity is equal to the area of the sphere of the source point times the amount of whatever...

Hi, I'm looking for information about equations and how to rationalize them in a naive way. Looking forward to running my misconceptions by everyone.