AS101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Apparent Weight, Weightlessness, Ellipse
Document Summary
Tides: gravity in action: tides are caused by small differences in gravitational forces. As the earth and moon orbit around each other, they attract each other gravitationally. Earth"s center: an object orbiting earth is actually falling (being accelerated) towards. An object in a stable orbit continuously misses earth because of its. Why are astronauts weightless in space: there is gravity in space, weightlessness is due to a constant state of free fall around the earth, the apparent weight of an object in freefall is zero (no sensation of weight) Orbital motion: that circular velocity depends only on the mass of the planet and the distance from the center of the planet. If an object gains enough orbital energy, it may escape (change from a bound to unbound orbit: escape and orbital velocities don"t depend on the mass of the object. Kepler"s third law: more distant planets orbit the sun at slower average speeds,
