Lecture

Universal Gravitation: Kepler's Laws and Newton's Insights

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In course

PHYS-101(f): General physics : mechanics

Le but du cours de physique générale est de donner à l'étudiant les notions de base nécessaires à la compréhension des phénomènes physiques. L'objectif est atteint lorsque l'étudiant est capable de prévoir quantitativement les conséquences de ces phénomène ...

Description

This lecture covers the concepts of central force, angular momentum, and the conservation of angular momentum. It delves into the historical shift from geocentrism to heliocentrism, exploring Kepler's laws and Newton's law of universal gravitation. The presentation also discusses the implications of Newton's insights on the dynamics of planetary motion, the law of areas, and the gravitational field. Furthermore, it touches upon the development of the Keplerian system, the effects of general relativity, and the concept of gravitational potential energy. The lecture concludes with a detailed explanation of central motion, prime integrals, and the determination of orbits in a central potential.

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Instructors (2)

Sylvain Bréchet

Sylvain Bréchet was born on October 13th, 1981 in Moudon (legal origin Epesses, VD, Switzerland). He obtained a Master of Science in physics at EPFL in 2005. He went on to Cambridge for his PhD studies in theoretical cosmology from 2005 to 2009 under the supervision of Prof. Lasenby (FRS) and Prof. Michael Hobson at the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge. He went back to EPFL where he is since 2010 university lecturer and research scientist in the Institute of Condensed Matter Physics. He taught classical mechanics, special relativity and thermodynamics to mechanical, electrical engineering students and physics students. He is currently writing a textbook in thermodynamics.

Frédéric Blanc

Expertise High Energy Physics Teaching & PhD PhD Students Rita De Sousa Ataíde Da Silva, Dimitrios Kaminaris, Maria Carolina Feliciano Faria Past EPFL PhD Students Lino Ferreira Lopes, Vladimir Macko, Guillaume Max Pietrzyk Past EPFL PhD Students as codirector Jessica Prisciandaro, Giovanni Veneziano, Sebastiana Gianì, Lino Ferreira Lopes, Guillaume Max Pietrzyk Courses Selected topics in nuclear and particle physics PHYS-400 This course presents the physical principles and the recent rese

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Physics

Relativity: General relativity

Mechanics: Classical mechanics

Related concepts (32)

Gravitational field

In physics, a gravitational field is a model used to explain the influences that a massive body extends into the space around itself, producing a force on another massive body. Thus, a gravitational field is used to explain gravitational phenomena, and is measured in newtons per kilogram (N/kg). Equivalently, it is measured in meters per second squared (m/s2). In its original concept, gravity was a force between point masses.

Gravitational energy

Gravitational energy or gravitational potential energy is the potential energy a massive object has in relation to another massive object due to gravity. It is the potential energy associated with the gravitational field, which is released (converted into kinetic energy) when the objects fall towards each other. Gravitational potential energy increases when two objects are brought further apart. For two pairwise interacting point particles, the gravitational potential energy is given by where and are the masses of the two particles, is the distance between them, and is the gravitational constant.

Gravitational potential

In classical mechanics, the gravitational potential at a point in space is equal to the work (energy transferred) per unit mass that would be needed to move an object to that point from a fixed reference point. It is analogous to the electric potential with mass playing the role of charge. The reference point, where the potential is zero, is by convention infinitely far away from any mass, resulting in a negative potential at any finite distance.

Gravitational wave

Gravitational waves are waves of the intensity of gravity that are generated by the accelerated masses of an orbital binary system, and propagate as waves outward from their source at the speed of light. They were first proposed by Oliver Heaviside in 1893 and then later by Henri Poincaré in 1905 as waves similar to electromagnetic waves but the gravitational equivalent. Gravitational waves were later predicted in 1916 by Albert Einstein on the basis of his general theory of relativity as ripples in spacetime.

Gravitational redshift

In physics and general relativity, gravitational redshift (known as Einstein shift in older literature) is the phenomenon that electromagnetic waves or photons travelling out of a gravitational well (seem to) lose energy. This loss of energy corresponds to a decrease in the wave frequency and increase in the wavelength, known more generally as a redshift. The opposite effect, in which photons (seem to) gain energy when travelling into a gravitational well, is known as a gravitational blueshift (a type of blueshift).

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