Kepler's Laws, Universal or Not?

By Jake Ribich

Introduction

While it may seem as though the heavens are an unorderly place, each and every planetary body actually follows the same set of patterns. These patterns were at one point only theory, but they now exist as universal laws. However, this project will focus exclusively on the planets within our solar system.

Throughout the early years of astronomy, it was believed and accepted that the earth was located at the center of the universe. Based partially in science and partially in religion, this claim went virtually unquestioned for thousands of years. However, in 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus published the extremely contraversial idea that this claim was actually false. He proposed the idea of heliocentricity, or the notion that the universe was centered around the sun, not around the earth. Between the years of 1609 and 1619, Johannes Kepler published a work which would strongly support this idea of heliocentricity. The work contained what would later be called Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion, and went on to explain and describe the motions of the heavenly bodies. My goal with this project is to model these three laws, illustrating the motions of the planets while also mathematically proving them. All three laws will be dependent on the law of universal gravitation. Using this equation to determine the effects that each planetary body has on one another, their respective motions can not only be calculated, but easily illustrated. While the math behind these models will be based only on proven calculations, not all of these proofs will be provided.

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