What is the intensity of the gravitational field at the center of a spherical shell of mass ‘m’ and radius ‘r’?

CONCEPT:

• Gravitational potential: Gravitational potential at any point inside the gravitational field is equal to work done in bringing a unit mass from infinite distance to a certain distance r from its center.

Thus, it can be expressed as

\(V = - \frac{{GM}}{r}\)

Here V is gravitational potential, G is gravitational constant, M is mass of the planet and r is the distance between Mass M and some other object brought from an infinite distance.

EXPLANATION:

• Inside the hollow sphere, the potential is equally distributed at every point of the surface in the gravitational field. So at any point, the potential will be zero.
• Thus at the center potential will also be zero, it is also zero because at center pull is equal in all directions so they will cancel out each other.

So option 3 is correct.