ICSE Class 9 Answered

According to Newton's law of gravitation, two bodies exert force on each other whose magnitude is equal to the product of masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Every 2 pair of bodies in this universe follows this law, so they do experience a force irrespective of whether they are big or small. But you can not see every small body moving towards the every big body like as apple moves towards the earth due to 2 reasons. First the acceleration of the body is given by the force divided by the mass of the body, so if you calculate this force for normal day bodies you see around and then divide this force by their mass, their acceleration will come very very very small. but still there will be some nonzero value of the acceleration. Secondly, all bodies on the earth are at a very small distance from earth as compared to other bodies in the universe outside the earth, and also the mass of earth is huge as compared to the mass of everyday bodies you see around. So, the earth's gravitational field is so strong that it almost diminishes the other gravitational force experienced by the onject, if you calculate the acceleration for a normal everyday life object due to earth that value is many times greater than the acceleration due to other bodies. This is the reason you see the apple falling on the ground and not moving towards any other building or any other object.