Today, we will focus on applying the general ideas I presented on Tuesday. This will start by motivating the full form of Newton's general law of gravitation, and the principle of superposition. This will allow us to handle the gravitational force between arbitrary (non-point-like) objects like spheres and disks and so forth, as well as the gravitational force above the earth's surface. You should have read most of Ch. 13 by now ...
As a side bonus, we'll figure out what really happens if you drill a hole through the earth.
This will lead us to gravitational potential energy, which will reduce to mgh close to the earth's surface, and lead us to the energy required to achieve stable orbits around a planet/star/etc. From there, we already derived Kepler's laws, and that is that.
I hope to spend a good amount of time on the homework problems for this week and some other examples, at the expense of what is normally reserved for lab time. In what time is left, I want to see your progress on rocket calculations and what your next plans are.
Friday, I will announce another small rocket-related project ... next week, each team will have to present a short progress report.
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