A solar system has the five planets shown below. The mass of each planet is proportion
Planet A, Planet B, Planet C, and Planet D.
Planet A
Planet B
Planet X
Olo]
Planet D
Planet C
lo
Which planet exerts the greatest gravitational force on Planet X?

Planet C

Explanation:

The figure of the problem is missing: find it in attachment.

The magnitude of the gravitational force between two objects is given by the equation:

where

G is the gravitational constant

m1, m2 are the masses of the two objects

r is the separation between the objects

In this problem, we have four planets around planet X, and the mass of each planet is proportional to its size in the figure.

As we can see from the previous equation, the magnitude of the gravitational force is proportional to the mass of the planets: therefore, the planet with largest mass will exert the largest gravitational force on planet X.

From the figure, we see that planet C has the largest size, so the largest mass: therefore, planet C exerts the greatest gravitational force on planet X.

small = small current large mag large current