Quote:
Originally Posted by Fazor
My question is this; if acceleration is the same, then doesn't the force acting upon the body have to scale based on the object's mass? Doesn't there need to be more force in order for a 10kg object to be accelerated the same speed as is needed to accelerate a 1kg object?
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I probably misunderstood your question, because I don't really understand how the rest of the posts in this thread answer it very directly.
So for what it's worth, here's how I've always "understood" it (I know I know very little):
Gravity, being a field (or a curve in space, or whatever) is affecting all mass in that (area of the) field by some acceleration.
Every gram of that 10kg object is in that field, and feels the acceleration due to that field. Every gram of that 1kg object is in that field, and feels the acceleration due to that field.
Gravity does not provide a force
per object.
So both objects accelerate the same, as every unit of mass in each object feels the same acceleration. The 10kg object could be 10 x 1kg objects that happen to be next to each other.
Basically, the bigger object
does feel more force (by f=ma). It's the sum of force exerted on each unit of mass, by the acceleration of gravity.
That's just my amateur/layperson impression.
(I think I've read that near a black hole the gradient of the change in gravitational acceleration means one side of the 10kg object might experience so much more acceleration than the other, that it would pull apart...)
Cheers,