Kepler's Laws

Terminology

100

Earth centered planetary model

What is Geocentric?

200

Sun centered planetary model

What is heliocentric?

300

The way things really are

What is truth?

400

The large circle that an epicycle travels on

What is the Deferent?

500

The study of WHY objects move (as opposed to HOW they move.)

What is Dynamics?

Laws of Planetary Motion

100

Equal time, equal area

What is Kepler's Second Law? 

200

The law which states that planets orbit the sun in elliptical paths

What is Kepler's First Law?

300

For a planet in an elliptical orbit to sweep out equal areas in equal time it must move fastest at this point in its orbit.

What is perihelion?

400

Formula for Kepler's 3rd Law

P²⁼a³  

OR

T²=a³

500

What Kepler's 3rd law means

The farther a planet is from the sun, the longer it will take to make one revolution around the sun.

Astronomers

100

Built a 'state of the art' observatory using the Danish king's money to collect the most accurate astronomical observations to date.

Who is Tycho Brahe?

200

Used the epicycle, equant and eccentric to build his planetary model

Who is Ptolemy?

300

Hired as an assistant to Tycho Brahe to determine the orbit of Mars

Who is Johannes Kepler?

400

Built a heliocentric model using Platonic solids

Who is Johannes Kepler?

500

Built a heliocentric model that had an elegant and simple solution for retrograde motion

Who is Copernicus?

Math is Fun

100

If c = 30 AU and a = 120 AU, what does e equal?

What is .25?

200

If e = .34 and a = 200 AU, what does c equal?

What is 68 AU?

300

If e = .011 and c = 395 AU, what does a equal?

What is 35,909.09 AU?

400

If 2a equals 24 AU, what P (or T) equals.

What is 41.57 years?

500

If an ellipse's semimajor axis is 35 cm and its eccentricity is 0.6, what is the distance between the two foci?

What is 42 cm?

Out of this World

100

Name of the point on the planet's orbit that is farthest from the sun

What is aphelion?

200

What is located at the two foci of a planet's orbit

What is the sun and nothing?

300

Special feature of Mars' orbit that led to Kepler's laws

What is it has the most elliptical orbit of the observable planets in Kepler's time?

400

An apparent shift of position of an object caused by the distance it is viewed from.

What is Parallax?

500

Where a planet decreases in speed in its orbit

What is after the perihelion but before the aphelion?