Gravitational acceleration ($g$)

Gravitational acceleration is the acceleration of a test particle in free fall in a Newtonian gravitational field. It is a vector pointing along that field; $g$ commonly denotes its positive magnitude. Near Earth's surface, the magnitude is approximately constant over shallow vertical scales. For a fixed spherical source it instead varies as $g(r)=\mu /r^2$, where $\mu$ is the standard gravitational parameter.

This is distinct from gravitational weight, the force $m\mathbf{g}$, and from apparent weight, the support force a scale measures. An orbiting body can have substantial gravitational acceleration while its apparent weight is zero.

A geophysical gravitational acceleration unit: $1\mathrm{mGal}=10^{-5}\mathrm{m}{\mathrm{s}}^{-2}$. It is used for small gravity anomalies and should be converted before substitution into SI forms of the Bouguer slab formula.

A collision-free positive-mass configuration satisfies the displayed equation when every gravitational acceleration points proportionally toward a common centre. With $W=-{\sum }_{i<j}G{m}_i{m}_j/|{\mathbf{a}}_i-{\mathbf{a}}_j|$, homogeneity gives $\Lambda I=-W>0$, $I={\sum }_i{m}_i|{\mathbf{a}}_i{|}^2$. Pairwise force cancellation implies ${\sum }_i{m}_i{\mathbf{a}}_i=0$. Such a configuration generates a nonrotating homothetic gravitational motion by multiplying all position vectors by one positive scale factor.

For a Newtonian central configuration, set ${\mathbf{x}}_i(t)=a(t){\mathbf{a}}_i$ with $a>0$. The gravitational force scales as $a^{-2}$, reducing all equations to the displayed scalar ordinary differential equation. Its first integral is ${\dot{a}}^2/2-\Lambda /a=k/2$. The total energy is $kI/2$, so the scalar energy constant exactly tracks the many-body energy for the fixed shape.