Ace the 2026 MSTEP Science Challenge – Ignite Your Genius!

Gravitational pull between two objects depends on their masses and how far apart they are. The force grows with the product of the two masses, and it weakens as the distance between them increases, following an inverse-square relationship. This is expressed by F = G m1 m2 / r^2, where G is a constant. Temperature doesn’t affect this force in everyday physics, so it doesn’t change how strong gravity is between two objects.

That means you can predict the strength of gravity by knowing both masses and their separation: doubling one mass while keeping distance fixed doubles the force; doubling the distance while keeping masses fixed reduces the force to one-fourth.