Another look at Helmholtz's model for the gravitational contraction of the Sun

Abstract

We take another look at the Helmholtz model for the gravitational contraction of the Sun. We show that there are two other pedagogically useful ways of rederiving Helmholtz's main results that make use of Gauss's law, the concept of gravitational field energy and the work–kinetic energy theorem. An account of the energy balance involved in the gravitational contraction process is also discussed.