Recent content by jacob_s

Thanks, those are indeed what I would have thought necessary to prove his results most thoroughly. The Wikipedia page *should* be just modelling Newton's own proof, though from a little looking on the university's library database, it appears that Newton's proof was likely significantly...

I appreciate your being thorough, but again what you previously showed was indeed the trivial part of my question - from the picture alone and basic understanding of physics/vectors it is clear that the non-axial components cancel. My concern is the jump to the conclusion that the sum of all...

Wow, it really has been a long time since I've done this kind of work. First of all, this does seem like a good method, though it doesn't really solve my concerns with Newton's method (which should be correct)... perhaps Wikipedia overlooked something? I really didn't feel like trying to get an...

Hello everyone! I'm a math major taking a university physics course, and I have a question about the proof that perfectly spherical objects have equivalent gravitational force as a point mass located in the center. The proof in question can be seen in one form at...