Central force fields and Kepler's laws

2018 ◽  
Vol 102 (554) ◽  
pp. 270-279
Author(s):  
Luis Blanco ◽  
María García-García ◽  
Joaquín Gutíerrez ◽  
Andrea Rios

In this survey we give very simple proofs of Kepler's Laws and other facts about central force fields using only Newton's second law, Newton's law of universal gravitation, basic notions of vector calculus, and an elementary double integral.Hopefully, this article will help undergraduate students of mathematics and engineering who wish to understand these fundamental scientific discoveries.In many textbooks (see, for instance, [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]), Kepler's Laws are obtained using conservation of energy and angular momentum, differential equations, mobile reference systems, or notions not so well-defined such as differentials or ‘infinitesimal elements’. Some of the arguments appear to be rather involved if one is not accustomed to them, whereas the proof of Kepler's Laws may actually be obtained from quite simple facts.

1959 ◽  
Vol 27 (8) ◽  
pp. 610-610
Author(s):  
Jacob Neuberger

2021 ◽  
Vol 2081 (1) ◽  
pp. 012012
Author(s):  
P N Antonyuk

Abstract Everyone knows that the inverse square law follows from Kepler’s third law. Let us prove more: the law of universal gravitation follows from Kepler’s third law.


2014 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 16-27
Author(s):  
Brent Lee Jarvis

Newton Generalized Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion when he Developed his Laws of Universal Gravitation. Additional Generalizations are Submitted and an Auspicious Unified Model that can Be Tested Experimentally is Disclosed.


Author(s):  
Joseph Amal Nathan

Kepler's laws is an appropriate topic which brings out the significance of pedal equation in Physics. There are several articles which obtain the Kepler's laws as a consequence of the conservation and gravitation laws. This can be shown more easily and ingeniously if one uses the pedal equation of an Ellipse. In fact the complete kinematics of a particle in a attractive central force field can be derived from one single pedal form. Though many articles use the pedal equation, only in few the classical procedure (without proof) for obtaining the pedal equation is mentioned. The reason being the classical derivations can sometimes be lengthier and also not simple. In this paper using elementary physics we derive the pedal equation for all conic sections in an unique, short and pedagogical way. Later from the dynamics of a particle in the attractive central force field we deduce the single pedal form, which elegantly describes all the possible trajectories. Also for the purpose of completion we derive the Kepler's laws.


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