"Did you work on the basis that the material acted as a point mass?"
A common use for point mass lies in the analysis of the gravitational force fields.
After equating this integral to 1, the point mass can be found by further calculation.
This is a measure on the real line, a "point mass" at 0.
Each term in the above summation is an individual Newtonian potential for a point mass.
Implicit in this law is the concept of "point" masses.
For example, a point mass is represented by a delta function defined in 3-dimensional space.
In its original concept, gravity was a force between point masses.
Another kind of directed distance is that between two different particles or point masses at a given time.
The position of the point mass is now given by:
