Acceleration around Earth, the Moon, and other planets

Changes due to location

The acceleration g varies by about 1/2 of 1 percent with position on Earth’s surface, from about 9.78 meters per second per second at the Equator to approximately 9.83 meters per second per second at the poles. In addition to this broad-scale variation, local variations of a few parts in 10⁶ or smaller are caused by variations in the density of Earth’s crust as well as height above sea level.

Changes with time

The gravitational potential at the surface of Earth is due mainly to the mass and rotation of Earth, but there are also small contributions from the distant Sun and Moon. As Earth rotates, those small contributions at any one place vary with time, and so the local value of g varies slightly. Those are the diurnal and semidiurnal tidal variations. For most purposes it is necessary to know only the variation of gravity with time at a fixed place or the changes of gravity from place to place; then the tidal variation can be removed. Accordingly, almost all gravity measurements are relative measurements of the differences from place to place or from time to time.

Unit of gravity

Because gravity changes are far less than 1 meter per second per second, it is convenient to have a smaller unit for relative measurements. The gal (named after Galileo) has been adopted for this purpose; a gal is one-hundredth of a meter per second per second. The unit most commonly used is the milligal, which equals 10⁻⁵ meter per second per second—i.e., about one-millionth of the average value of g.

Absolute measurements

Two basic ways of making absolute measurements of gravity have been devised: timing the free fall of an object and timing the motion under gravity of a body constrained in some way, almost always as a pendulum. In 1817 the English physicist Henry Kater, building on the work of the German astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel, was the first to use a reversible pendulum to make absolute measurements of g. If the periods of swing of a rigid pendulum about two alternative points of support are the same, then the separation of those two points is equal to the length of the equivalent simple pendulum of the same period. By careful construction, Kater was able to measure the separation very accurately. The so-called reversible pendulum was used for absolute measurements of gravity from Kater’s day until the 1950s. Since that time, electronic instruments have enabled investigators to measure with high precision the half-second time of free fall of a body (from rest) through one meter. It is also possible to make extremely accurate measurements of position by using interference of light. Consequently, direct measurements of free fall have replaced the pendulum for absolute measurements of gravity.

More From Britannica

subatomic particle: Gravity

Nowadays, lasers are the sources of light for interferometers, while the falling object is a retroreflector that returns a beam of light back upon itself. The falling object can be timed in simple downward motion, or it can be projected upward and timed over the upward and downward path. Transportable versions of such apparatuses have been used in different locations to establish a basis for measuring differences of gravity over the entire Earth. The accuracy attainable is about one part in 10⁸.

More recently, interferometers using beams of atoms instead of light have given absolute determinations of gravity. Interference takes place between atoms that have been subject to different gravitational potentials and so have different energies and wavelengths. The results are comparable to those from bodies in free fall.

Relative measurements

From the time of Newton, measurements of differences of gravity (strictly, the ratios of values of gravity) were made by timing the same pendulum at different places. During the 1930s, however, static gravimeters replaced pendulums for local measurements over small ranges of gravity. Today, free-fall measurements have rendered the pendulum obsolete for all purposes.

Spring gravimeters balance the force of gravity on a mass in the gravity field to be measured against the elastic force of the spring. Either the extension of the spring is measured, or a servo system restores it to a constant amount. High sensitivity is achieved through electronic or mechanical means. If a thin wire is stretched by a mass hung from it, the tension in the wire, and therefore the frequency of transverse oscillations, will vary with the force of gravity upon the mass. Such vibrating string gravimeters were originally developed for use in submarines and were later employed by the Apollo 17 astronauts on the Moon to conduct a gravity survey of their landing site. Another relatively recent development is the superconducting gravimeter, an instrument in which the position of a magnetically levitated superconducting sphere is sensed to provide a measure of g. Modern gravimeters may have sensitivities better than 0.005 milligal, the standard deviation of observations in exploration surveys being of the order of 0.01–0.02 milligal.

Differences in gravity measured with gravimeters are obtained in quite arbitrary units—divisions on a graduated dial, for example. The relation between these units and milligals can be determined only by reading the instrument at a number of points where g is known as a result of absolute or relative pendulum measurements. Further, because an instrument will not have a completely linear response, known points must cover the entire range of gravity over which the gravimeter is to be used.

Since g is an acceleration, the problem of its measurement from a vehicle that is moving, and therefore accelerating relative to Earth, raises a number of fundamental problems. Pendulum, vibrating-string, and spring-gravimeter observations have been made from submarines; using gyrostabilized platforms, relative gravity measurements with accuracies approaching a few milligals have been and are being made from surface ships. Experimental measurements with various gravity sensors on fixed-wing aircraft as well as on helicopters have been carried out.