Hello everyone. I hope all of you are enjoying your summer. I was wondering
if someone could please help me out? I have forgotten the name of a
phenomenon and it has been driving me crazy! I've looked all over my notes
and the internet, and the name has escaped me, but I'm hoping that someone
would be able to help me out.
Here it is: Technically, whenever you have a mass in space, no matter how far
away you get from that object, there is always a little bit of a gravitational
pull. The same is true if you have 2 fixed objects in space, no matter how
far away you move away from them, there is always a little bit of
gravitational pull, except for one small point somewhere in between those 2
objects. Actually, the gravitational pull between the 2 objects are present,
but they are also equal and in opposite directions to oneanother.
In other words, if the earth and moon were 2 fixed objects (the only objects)
in space and somewhere in between (a little closer to the moon side), a 3rd
object at a certain point would be pulled with equal magnitude and in opposite
directions. Therefore, the 3rd object, if it wasn't moving to begin with,
would not move to either of the other larger objects due to vector sums of the
gravitational pull equaling zero.
Does anyone know of the name of this? I was discussing this with a fellow
science teacher and we were both racking our brains trying to remember what
this was called.