Editing Mass (section)

=== Newton's cannonball ===
[[File:Newton Cannon.svg|thumb|A cannon on top of a very high mountain shoots a cannonball horizontally.  If the speed is low, the cannonball quickly falls back to Earth (A,&nbsp;B). At [[orbital speed|intermediate speeds]], it will revolve around Earth along an elliptical orbit (C,&nbsp;D). Beyond the [[escape velocity]], it will leave the Earth without returning (E).]]
{{main|Newton's cannonball}}

Newton's cannonball was a [[thought experiment]] used to bridge the gap between Galileo's gravitational acceleration and Kepler's elliptical orbits.  It appeared in Newton's 1728 book ''A Treatise of the System of the World''.  According to Galileo's concept of gravitation, a dropped stone falls with constant acceleration down towards the Earth.  However, Newton explains that when a stone is thrown horizontally (meaning sideways or perpendicular to Earth's gravity) it follows a curved path.  "For a stone projected is by the pressure of its own weight forced out of the rectilinear path, which by the projection alone it should have pursued, and made to describe a curve line in the air; and through that crooked way is at last brought down to the ground.  And the greater the velocity is with which it is projected, the farther it goes before it falls to the Earth."<ref name=principia />{{rp|513}} Newton further reasons that if an object were "projected in an horizontal direction from the top of a high mountain" with sufficient velocity, "it would reach at last quite beyond the circumference of the Earth, and return to the mountain from which it was projected."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Newton |first1=Isaac |author-link=Isaac Newton |title=A Treatise of the System of the World |date=1728 |publisher=F. Fayram |location=London |page=6 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rEYUAAAAQAAJ&q=ball&pg=PR1 |access-date=4 May 2022}}</ref>