"Celestial Mechanics"

This will be a talk to try and show how basic mathematics (school level calculus and algebra) along with Newton's Law's gives us the laws that we have used for centuries to determine planetary motion, and predict many stellar events (e.g. transits, close approaches of planets, etc...).
In the talk I plan to focus specifically on showing the following points,

1:
That the planets do indeed orbit in a plane (i.e. the motions of the solar systems are essentially a two dimensional problem).
2:
To show how some of Kepler's Laws are derived, (e.g. Keplers Third Law: A Line joining a planet and its star sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time, also known as the law of equal areas).
3:
To show that the planet's orbits follow elliptic paths.

This talk should be of interest to anyone with an interest in stellar maps, (those published in Astronomy & Space), any school student thinking of pursuing a course in Astronomy in third level, any secondary school students taking Physics, Maths or Applied Maths, and anyone in the public with a curious mind.

 

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