Kepler's laws

Ages

Introduction

Summary

Kepler (1571 - 1630) announced his three famous laws of planetary motion in 1609:

Each planet moves in an elliptical orbit, with the sun at one focus of the ellipse.

A line from the sun to a given planet sweeps out equal areas in equal time.

The periods of the planets are proportional to the 3/2 power of the major axis length of their orbits.

This animation   illustrates the first two laws.

Goals

• To illustrate Kepler's laws.

Features

Click on to stop the animation.

Student sheet

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Tags

gravitation Kepler area orbit ellipse perigee apogee