Moon Gazing

PREFLIGHT

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The following questions refer to the material you were to read in preparation for the lesson.

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Kepler's Laws

Ellipticity is a subtle thing. Try all the presets given for each one of the planets and notice how difficult it is to see any ellipticity at all! Kepler must have had truly acute eyesight. Now answer the following questions. [1] Which planet has the lowest ellipticity? Which has the highest? [2] How much faster is the fast part of the orbit for these 2 planets? That is, can you calculate (Fast - Slow)/Slow = % difference for these 2 planets using the big dial?

honors extra

Pretend you are Kepler and you have now got the planets all arranged by orbit and speed, and you are trying to find some relationship between the speed or period of an orbit and its distance from the Sun. You are using a plot of the period (vertical y-axis) and the distance (horizontal x-axis), and trying to fit a line through the data points. After some trial and error, you discover that the semi-major axis of the ellipse works best as the x-axis. You set the exponent of the period to be one "p^1", which of course, is just "p". What exponent of "a" is needed to fit the data? Does this still agree with "Kepler's Third Law"? Why or why not?

Below is a space for your thoughts, including general comments about today's assignment (what seemed impossible, what reading didn't make sense, what we should spend class time on, what was "cool", etc. ):

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I received no help from anyone on this assignment.