A Puny Force to Be Reckoned With

How strong is gravity?

For the record, here is the widely accepted estimate for the Newtonian constant of gravitation, often called G: .0000000000667259 meters cubed per kilogram second squared.

Let’s put it another way. Roughly speaking, if a 150-pound person stood a couple of feet away from a 200-pound person, the gravitational attraction between them would be about 100 times smaller than the weight of a postage stamp, physicist Jim Faller says.

“The gravitational force is weak,” celebrated physicist Richard Feynman once told a scientific conference. “In fact, it’s damned weak.”

At that moment, a loudspeaker broke loose from the ceiling and crashed to the floor. As recounted in James Gleick’s “Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman,” the physicist reacted swiftly.

“Weak,” Feynman said, “but not negligible.”