Lecture 19: Orbits
Why do Kepler's Laws work? In this lecture I will describe Newton's\ngeneralization of Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion so that they will\napply to any two massive bodies orbiting around their common center of\nmass. I will introduce families of open and closed orbits, the circular\nand escape speeds, center-of-mass, conservation of angular momentum, and\nNewton's generalized version of Kepler's 3rd Law. The latter is a\npowerful tool for using orbital motions as our only way to measure the\nmasses of astronomical objects. Recorded 2007 Oct 16 in 1000 McPherson\nLab on the Columbus campus of The Ohio State University.