1Jan/064
Kepler
by submission
Image text: Science joke. You should probably move along
This comic provided by Rik 't Hoff. http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=516678350
“Kepler” refers to Johannes Kepler, a German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer, best known for his laws of planetary motion. By observing our solar system each night at the same spot, Kepler was able to deduct that planets in the system do not move in a circular direction around the Sun, but rather in an oval way. As you can imagine, this observation was very monotone, and very time-consuming. Hence, if Kepler would have been a cleaner, he'd work consistent and “sweep” the same “area” every night.
January 3rd, 2012
This is more a reference to the fact that one of keplars laws is about the area that a planets orbit “sweeps” out as it travels being equal regardless of distance. that was my interpretatoin at least
January 6th, 2012
Yes: Kepler formulated three ‘laws of planetary motion’: the orbits being ellipses with the object being orbited at one of the foci is the first law.
The second is that the area that a line drawn being the orbiting object and the object being orbited will ’sweep’ over an equal area in equal amounts of time, no matter where in the orbit it is. This has to do with the speed the object is traveling at changing depending on how far away it is from object it’s orbiting: when it’s further away, and the line is longer, it travels more slowly than when it’s close in and the line is short. This causes the area ’swept over’ to be equal in both cases despite the changing length of the line.
The third law states that there is a fixed relationship between how long it takes the object to orbit and the length of the widest part of the ellipse the orbit traces out.
January 5th, 2012
“Regular Kepling keeps the floor clear of unidentified objects.” “He Kepled for two hours and then took a break, launching into a Mars Bar.”
February 9th, 2012
Imagine a comet tied to the Sun via an invisible but infinitely stretchy string. If you know the speed of the comet at any point, you can easily deduce how much faster it will move as it approaches the Sun, and how much slower it will move as it flies away. This is because of Kepler’s Law, which states (informally) that the area “sweeped” across between a heavenly body and the body it orbits will be the same distance over any selected unit of time. As the orbiter comes closer to the focus that has the gravitational well, it covers less territory in area (between it and the Sun), and so it moves that much faster.
It’s a remarkable result that simplifies astronomical calculations considerably, since everything orbits in an ellipse–but it is particularly useful for comets and the like since they have very wide orbits.
You should change your explanation text because it is wrong and silly.