ASTRON C10 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Speed, Circular Motion, Orbital Period

• School: Berkeley
• Department: Astronomy
• Course: ASTRON C10
• Professor: Alexei Filippenko

Document Summary

Continuous, limited and periodic, it"s possible to replicate any planet"s orbit. Any can be reproduced with sins and cosines. Discovers universal law of gravitation, develops law of motion, begins optical studies, invents calculus. If no forces act on a body, its speed and direction of motion stay constant. For a given force, big mass is accelerated less than a less mass. When two bodies interact, they exert equal and opposite forces on each other. Used ratios to discover the difference in value between the gravitational force of the moon and an apple. The acceleration of an object is independent of its mass. Without any force, it would continue to move in a straight line. Body starts at earth and accelerates due to gravity to velocity. Constant tangential speed plus gravity = orbit. When gravity is lost, it moves tangentially. K depends on the mass of the planet and the sun.