Gravitational acceleration is the acceleration experienced by an object due to the gravitational force exerted by a massive body, such as a planet or a star. It is commonly denoted by the symbol \( g \). On the surface of the Earth, the average value of gravitational acceleration is approximately \( 9.81 \, \text{m/s}^2 \).
Articles by others on the same topic
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; 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 , where is the standard gravitational parameter.
This is distinct from gravitational weight, the force , and from apparent weight, the support force a scale measures. An orbiting body can have substantial gravitational acceleration while its apparent weight is zero.