Physics on 4/18/13By honorsphysics12o, April 18, 2013 By
honorsphysics12o, April 18, 2013 | | Honors Physics (1-2 O)
Shields started the day with a warm up involving the distance of
the planets from the sun against their velocity. After we had
all plotted the data, and then tried to put an equation to the
data, Shields explained to us the true type of equation of the
data—a power function. A power equation is an equation whose
form is V=D1/2. As we learned back in the gravity unit,
mv2/r=GMm/r2, which can be reduced to V=G (1/√r), this is good
because they are orbiting a center of gravity. And so we have
used data to plot a behavior that follows a function. For our
group, the power curve fits the data with an r2 value of .9998
(For those of you who haven’t taken stats, the closer to 1, the
better the function fits the curve, in this case, it fits very
well). Shields then instructed us to go to a link on his website
to get data on the Milky Way. After we had plotted the data, it
was obvious that the actual dat