Orbital Motion Flashcards
(11 cards)
What is a circular orbit?
An orbit that follows the path of a circle
What is an elliptical orbit?
An orbit that follows the path of an ellipse
What holds the earth in its orbit?
The force of gravity acting between the sun and the Earth
What is the moon?
A natural satellite
How often do geostationary satellites orbit?
Every 24 hours this means that they always point to the same part of the earth
What does the force of gravity lead to in a circular orbit?
A change in velocity, but not a change of speed.
Explain the correlation between speed, velocity and the planet’s orbit
Velocity is a given direction
The direction is constantly changing when orbiting
The speed is constant however.
The force of gravity is changing the velocity but not the speed.
What happens when the speed of a satellite changes?
The radius of the orbit also changes
What happens to radius when speed of satellite increases?
Then the radius of the orbit decreases
Why is that the radius of the orbit decreases when the speed increases?
The satellite needs a GREATER force of gravity to prevent it from flying off into space.
Planet A is closer to the sun
Planet B is further away from Sun
Both in circular orbit
Which planet will have a faster orbit speed.
-> Planet A
As an object gets closer to the Sun the gravity will increase.
This will cause the GPE store of the Satellite to DECREASE.
Therefore the Kinetic energy store of the object to INCREASE
Consequently, the object will have an increase in speed but not Velocity.
Finally, object A will be moving faster.
