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Gravity from the ground up
Gravity
from the ground up
Bernard Schutz
Max Planck Institute for
Gravitational Physics
(The Albert Einstein Institute)
Golm, Germany
and
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Cardiff University, UK
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
Information on this title: 0521455060
© Bernard Schutz 2003
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of
relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place
without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published in print format 2003
ISBN-13 978-0-511-33696-6 eBook (EBL)
ISBN-10 0-511-33696-9 eBook (EBL)
ISBN-13 978-0-521-45506-0 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-45506-5 hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls
for external or third-party websites referred to in this publication, and does not
guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
To my children
Rachel, Catherine, and Annalie
who have not known a time when I was
not writing “the book”!
Contents
Preface xiii
Background: what you need to know before you start xxiii
1 Gravity on Earth: the inescapable force 1
• Galileo: the beginnings of the science of gravity • The acceleration of gravity
is uniform • Trajectories of cannonballs • Galileo: the first relativist
2 And then came Newton: gravity takes center stage 9
• The second law: weight and mass • The third law, and its loophole • Preview:
Newton’s gravity • Action at a distance • The new equivalence principle • The
gravitational redshift of light • Gravity slows time • Summing up
3 Satellites: what goes up do