Johannes Kepler Research Paper

Johannes Kepler: Laws of Motions

“… the ways by which men arrive at knowledge of the celestial things are hardly less wonderful than the nature of these things themselves.” A wonderful quote by Johannes Kepler who was born on December 27 of 1571, in Weil der Stadt, Württemberg, in the Holy Roman Empire of German Nationality (Kepler.nasa.gov) Kepler was highly intelligent and got himself a scholarship to the University of Tübingen to study Lutheran ministry. By the time he was 30 years old, Kepler inherited the position of Imperial Mathematician after the renowned Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe. Astronomia Nova, which translates into New Astronomy, was published in 1609, defining his discoveries, which are now titled Kepler’s first two laws

With Tycho’s data he was able to envision that Mars’ orbit would precisely fit an ellipse. Furthermore, he released his first law: Planets move in ellipses with the Sun at one focus. Referred to as the law of ellipses, it explains that planets are constantly orbiting the sun in a path described as a semi-circle (or ellipse). “An ellipse described by Physics for Scientists and Engineers with Modern Physics, is an oval shape traced by a point moving in a plane so that the sum of its distances from two other points, the foci, is a constant. Deduction, all planets orbit the sun in a path that resembles an ellipse, with the sun being located right at one of the foci of that

Describing his third, and arguably his most important law. As described by kepler.nasa.gov “the squares of the periodic times are to each other as the cubes of the mean distances.” Referred to as the law of harmonies, it compares the radius of orbit of one planet to those of another planet. Contrasting his first two laws that described motion characteristics of one planet at a time, his third law makes a evaluation between the motion of various different planets. The comparison being made is that the larger an orbit is the slower the average velocity of an orbiting object will be. Sir Isaac Newton will reform these laws in the future and change how we see the