Why can't theories become laws?

1 answer:

7 0

Since each serves a different purpose, theories cannot become laws. Explaining how or why a natural phenomenon occurs is what the set of ideas called theories do. On the other hand, mathematical relationships that describes what happens are what is done by laws.

Let me show an example that illustrates the points. Describing what happens in the natural world are done by the mathematical formulas called the Gas Laws. In this example, it would show that by using the Gas Laws, I will be able to predict with great accuracy the pressure if I double the temperature of a sealed gas. This idea is a law since the relationship is mathematical and it tells us what will happen.

On the other hand, in order to explain why gases behave like the way they do, we must use the kinetic molecular theory.

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Explanation:

The acceleration due to gravity g is defined as

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and solving for R, we find that

$R = \sqrt{\dfrac{GM}{g}}\:\:\:\:\:\:\:(1)$

We need the mass M of the planet first and we can do that by noting that the centripetal acceleration $F_c$ experienced by the satellite is equal to the gravitational force $F_G$ or

$F_c = F_G \Rightarrow m\dfrac{v^2}{r} = G\dfrac{mM}{r^2}\:\:\:\:\:(2)$

The orbital velocity v is the velocity of the satellite around the planet defined as

$v = \dfrac{2\pi r}{T}$

where r is the radius of the satellite's orbit in meters and T is the period or the time it takes for the satellite to circle the planet in seconds. We can then rewrite Eqn(2) as

$\dfrac{4\pi^2 r}{T^2} = G\dfrac{M}{r^2}$