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6 months ago in Physics By Junaid

Wait, can hooke’s law actually calculate gravity between two objects?

Okay, this is probably a dumb question, but Hooke's Law is F = -kx, gravity is F = G m1 m2 / r². Could you somehow use the first one to figure out the second one for two masses floating in space?

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By Shreesha Answered 1 month ago

Not a dumb question it's actually a clean way to realize these describe totally different phenomena. Hooke's Law is about elasticity: the restoring force from stretching a spring. It requires a physical material and an equilibrium point. Gravity is about mass attraction over distance. No spring, no equilibrium, no linear relationship. You can't derive one from the other. They just live in different conceptual buckets.

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