GRAVITATION 1

Early in our lives, we become aware of the tendency of all material objects to be attracted towards the earth. Anything thrown up falls down towards the earth, going uphill is a lot more tiring than going downhill, raindrops from the clouds above fall towards the earth and there are many other such phenomena. Historically it was the Italian Physicist Galileo(1564-1642) who recognised the fact that all bodies, irrespective of their masses, are accelerated towards the earth with a constant acceleration. It is said that he made a public demonstration of this fact. To find the truth, he certainly did experiments with bodies rolling down inclined planes and arrived at a value of the acceleration due to gravity which is close to the more accurate value obtained late