At an altitude above Earth’s surface the acceleration due to gravity is

PHYSICS · Multi-part · CBSE · Physics · Gravitation · Gravitation

Problem

At an altitude

h_1 = 300\,\text{km}

above Earth’s surface the acceleration due to gravity is

g_1

. At another altitude

h_2

the acceleration is exactly one-half of

g_1

. (i) Determine the value of

h_2

in kilometres. Take Earth’s radius

R_E = 6.4 \times 10^{6}\,\text{m}

. (ii) A payload has mass

800\,\text{kg}

. Find the difference in its weight between the two altitudes

h_1

and

h_2