Title: What are Kepler's Laws?
Speaker: Boming Jia, The Ohio State University
Seminar Type: What is... ?
Abstract: Kepler's laws of planetary motion are three scientific laws describing the motion of planets around the Sun. In 1609 Johannes Kepler published his first two laws about planetary motion, by analyzing the astronomical observations of Tycho Brahe. And Kepler's third law was published in 1619. Isaac Newton in 1687 showed that his own laws of motion and law of universal gravitation implies Kepler's laws. And this is the beginning of all mathematical formulations of Laws of Physics. In my talk, I am going to formulate the Kepler's laws in detail s, and present two derivations of all three of Kepler's laws from classical Newtonian mechanics. The first derivation is through solving differential equations and the second one will be totally elementary which was discovered by James Maxwell and rediscovered by Richard Feynman.
What are Kepler's laws? [pdf]
