Suppose we could dig a tunnel in the Earth passing through its center. If the Earth's density (that we'll take as a constant) is , the time a falling object takes to reach the other side of the tunnel is
where , and are the lowest possible natural numbers. What is ?
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According to Newton's law of gravitation:
F ( r ) = − G r 2 m M ( r )
is the force a body of mass m feels when attracted to the Earth due its gravity when the distance between m and Earth's center is r and M ( r ) is the mass of the Earth inside a sphere of radius r and same center as the Earth. So
M ( r ) = ρ V ( r ) = 3 4 π ρ r 3 ,
therefore
F ( r ) = − 3 4 π G ρ m r .
Now, according to Newton's second law of motion in this case we may write F ( r ) = m r ′ ′ . So
r ′ ′ + 3 4 π G ρ r = 0 ,
and due to our knowledge of SHM we may write
ω 2 = ( T 2 π ) 2 = 3 4 π G ρ ⇒ T = G ρ 3 π .
But, since we asked for the time the object takes to reach the other side:
t = 2 1 ( G ρ 3 π ) 1 / 2 .
So A = 2 , B = 3 and C = 2 .