Kevin Wampler <wam### [at] uwashingtonedu> wrote:
> >    (There's also the problem that some of the points will get too close
> > to the surface that way. If the location we are measuring the gravity
> > from happens to be too close to such a point, the result will be way too
> > high. In practice you have a small black hole near the surface of the
> > torus, and the test location is too close to it, skewing the result.)

> I would think that any approach based on approximating the torus as a 
> bunch of point masses would have this problem.

  Only if you start measuring inside the torus.

> >    I think it's just easier to scale the point masses according to a simple
> > quadratic function. It's just the exact function I'm looking for.

> Does just scaling the mass proportionally to a point's distance from the 
> torus' axis not work here?  If you're looking for an exact equation 
> based on the actual mass of the torus, just run a post-process 
> normalization pass where you scale the mass of each point so that they 
> sum to the total mass of the torus.

  I explained the details in my original post.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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