Your Language Queries: Universal Law Of Attraction

Clive answers:

All fields that originate at a point source (or can be considered as doing so) and spread out uniformly in all directions *must* obey an inverse square law, simply from geometric considerations. This is true of the gravitational field due to a point mass, the electric field due to a point charge, the intensity of light from a point source of light, etc.

If the “strength” of the source of an effect is I, then at a distance r from the source, the strength of that effect is spread out over a sphere of surface area 4*pi*r^2. Per unit area, the strength of the effect at that distance is I/(4*pi*r^2). As r increases, the strength of the effect decreases as 1/r^2.