Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum Local Gravity Calculations

I live in lexington, KY, USA. Recently in a physics lab at the university i attend (Go CATS!!) i was presented with the question, what is our local gravity?

How does one calculate localG? average G seems to be 9.8m/s^2 however, due to the latitude and altitude, there is a small change.

anyone care to elaborate? thanx.

Gee
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gee

local value of G =

{9.7803184 * [1 + ((sin^2 of Latitude) * 0.0053024) - ((sin^2 of (2*Latitude)) * 0.0000059)]} - (.000003086 * altitude above mean sea level in meters)

dude thanx man, that's funny

http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/eotvos.htm#b32

Below the table. Taken from WGS84, a 360-degree polynomial fit to the geoid.

Al, honestly I understood less than a third of this. I got it at first ... but less than ... (I don't know, maybe a tenth) of the way through you began to lose me.

I tell the guys I work with "If I'm in a room with a bunch of you guys, you can pretty much bet I'm the dumbest guy in the room." That's not false modesty. That's realism.

Regardless, I'm not stupid. Well, sometimes I am, but generally, I'm pretty smart. Much more than average ... probably smarter than the average mensan, but maybe less smart than the average ISPEan, if that makes a difference.

I get the feeling from this link that the material consists stuff that someone really cares about - and has gone to pains to make accessible. For your edification, I'd say I'm "above average" (not that that is saying a lot) and I had a dickens of a time following it.