Lecture 19: Orbits

Why do Kepler's Laws work? In this lecture I will describe Newton's generalization of Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion so that they will apply to any two massive bodies orbiting around their common center of mass. I will introduce families of open and closed orbits, the circular and escape speeds, center-of-mass, conservation of angular momentum, and Newton's generalized version of Kepler's 3rd Law. The latter is a powerful tool for using orbital motions as our only way to measure the masses of astronomical objects. Recorded 2007 Oct 16 in 1000 McPherson Lab on the Columbus campus of The Ohio State University.