Gamow G. Gravity

New York: Anchor Books, 1962. — 158 p.A distinguished physicist takes an enlightening look at three scientists whose work unlocked many mysteries: Galileo, the first to examine the process of free and restricted fall; Newton, originator of a universal force; and Einstein, who proposed that gravity is no more than the curvature of the four-dimensional space-time continuum.Gravity rules the Universe. It holds together the one hundred billion stars of our Milky Way; it makes the Earth revolve around the Sun and the Moon around the Earth; it makes ripened apples and disabled airplanes fall to the ground. There are three great names in the history of man's understanding of gravity: Galileo Galilei, who was the first to study in detail the process of free and restricted fall; Isaac Newton, who first had the idea of gravity as a universal force; and Albert Einstein, who said that gravity is nothing but the curvature of the four-dimensional space-time continuum.In this book we shall go through all three stages of the development, devoting one chapter to Galileo's pioneering work, six chapters to Newton's ideas and their subsequent development, one chapter to Einstein, and one chapter to post-Einsteinian speculations concerning the relation between gravity and other physical phenomena/The emphasis on the "classics" in this outline grows from the fact that the theory of universal gravity is a classical theory. It is very probable that there is a hidden relation between gravity on the one hand and the electromagnetic field and material particles on the other, but nobody is prepared today to say what kind of relation it is. And there is no way of foretelling how soon any further important progress will be made in this direction.How Things Fall
The Apple and the Moon
Calculus
Planetary Orbits
The Earth as a Spinning Top
The Tides
Triumphs of Celestial Mechanics
Escaping Gravity
Einstein's Theory of Gravity
Unsolved Problems of Gravity
Gravity and Quantum Theory
Antigravity