Gravitational Constant - Laws and Constants

Laws and Constants

According to the law of universal gravitation, the attractive force (F) between two bodies is proportional to the product of their masses (m₁ and m₂), and inversely proportional to the square of the distance, r, (inverse-square law) between them:

The constant of proportionality, G, is the gravitational constant.

The gravitational constant is a physical constant that is difficult to measure with high accuracy. In SI units, the 2010 CODATA-recommended value of the gravitational constant (with standard uncertainty in parentheses) is:

with relative standard uncertainty 1.2×10−4.