A student claims that the planets orbit the Sun because of gravitational force. Which statement best supports this claim ? (1 point)
• The Sun has more mass than the planets.
O Planets rotate on their axis faster than the Sun.
O The Sun was the first part of the solar system to form.
O Planets are farther from the center of the solar system.
The Sun has more mass than the planets.
The statement "The Sun has more mass than the planets" best supports the claim that planets orbit the Sun because of gravitational force. Gravitational force is directly proportional to the mass of an object, so the Sun's larger mass compared to the planets allows it to exert a gravitational pull strong enough to keep the planets in orbit around it.
The statement that best supports the claim that the planets orbit the Sun because of gravitational force is "The Sun has more mass than the planets."
To understand why this statement supports the claim, we need to recall Newton's law of universal gravitation. According to this law, the force of gravitational attraction between two objects is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
In the context of our solar system, the Sun is by far the most massive object. It contains about 99.86% of the total mass of the solar system, with the planets comprising only a small fraction of the total mass. Due to its much larger mass, the Sun exerts a significant gravitational force on the planets.
This gravitational force pulls the planets towards the Sun and keeps them in orbit. The planets' motion around the Sun is a balance between the gravitational force pulling them inward and their own inertia, which wants to keep them moving in a straight line. This results in the circular or elliptical paths that we observe as planetary orbits around the Sun.
Therefore, the statement that the Sun has more mass than the planets provides a strong explanation for why the planets orbit the Sun due to gravitational force.