Lesson Plan: Kepler’s Third Law of Planetary Motion Physics
This lesson plan includes the objectives, prerequisites, and exclusions of the lesson teaching students how to use Kepler’s third law of planetary motion to find the orbital characteristics of planets and satellites.
Objectives
Students will be able to
- find for any orbiting object given and ,
- find for any orbiting object given the mass of the host,
- use in all permutations,
- use in all permutations.
Prerequisites
Students should already be familiar with
- astronomical units,
- elliptical orbits,
- the structure of the solar system.
Exclusions
Students will not cover
- Kepler’s second law,
- any non-Newtonian gravity.
