Universal Gravitation. Do you remember the molality problem from WMP! #40? (Check it out, if you haven't.) Well...I liked working on it and told myself that I need to incorporate more science-based problems into the weekly rotation. So, I'm doing another science problem this week. I want to begin re-familiarizing myself with the math involved in the sciences. So, I am excited to tackle physics this week. 😊 The last time I took physics was in high school, actually. So.....it's been way too long since I've done anything physics related--decades. This should be interestingly fun. 🥴
To solve this week's problem in completion, you need to recall the following math skills:
✔️ How to rearrange a formula to isolate the variable of interest
✔️ How to work with scientific notation
✔️ How to work with units
You should definitely have a calculator handy, by the way. Here is WMP! #43:
Check back on Friday, March 26th for the solution, which will be posted below ⬇️.
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✏️📓 Solution Time! 📓✏️
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So....hmmm.... let's see 👀 what's going on here. When you look up "Universal Gravitation", search results will include the Law of Universal Gravitation, images with circles (that represent two objects be it plants, people, or other), and the formula for it. For the purposes of focusing on the mathematical component, we'll just be focusing on the formula. Here is the formula and what each variable means with their corresponding units:
Now that we know the parts of the equation, let's examine the problem to see which information is provided for us to solve the problem. In true Younge Lady fashion, I've color-coded the information.
As you can see, according to the way I've labeled the man and the moon, we need to solve for the mass of the moon. The way the formula is given won't work for us, so we need to rearrange it to isolate the variable m2. What's nice about the formula is that it is a proportion. So, all I need to do is multiply both sides by the right expression that will allow me to isolate m2. Here goes...
Now, we can make the appropriate substitutions and solve for the mass of the moon. If you have a really cool scientific or graphing calculator with a good display, you can plug all of this in and compute the answer in one step.
The mass of the moon is 7.359x1022 kg. I hope you found this helpful. It was nice working on the problem this week.
▪️ Did you have any trouble solving for the mass of the moon?
▪️ When was the last time you took a physics class (if you ever did)?
▪️ Leave your response down below and let me know what you thought about this week's problem.
Thanks for solving with me this week!
Now...onto WMP! #44. 👊🏿
Cheers!
