Malto Jessica P.

12-Discipline March 17, 2019

An axiom or postulate is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as

a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. The word comes
from the Greek axíōma ('that which is thought worthy or fit' or 'that which
commends itself as evident.
The term has subtle differences in definition when used in the context of
different fields of study. As defined in classic philosophy, an axiom is a statement
that is so evident or well-established, that it is accepted without controversy or
question. As used in modern logic, an axiom is a premise or starting point for
reasoning.
Empirical looks like empire but comes from a completely different origin: it is from
the Greek empeirikos, meaning "experienced." It was originally used in medicine for
doctors making choices based on observation and experiment rather than
theoretical ideas. It's now used for any kind of knowledge that comes from
experience. You can meditate all day on the origins of donuts, but until you visit the
donut bakery you'll lack empirical knowledge of donut creation.

Kepler's laws of planetary motion

Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, in astronomy and classical physics, laws

describing the motions of the planets in the solar system. They were derived by
the German astronomer Johannes Kepler, whose analysis of the observations of the
16th-century Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe enabled him to announce his first
two laws in the year 1609 and a third law nearly a decade later, in 1618. Kepler
himself never numbered these laws or specially distinguished them from his other
discoveries.

Kepler’s three laws of planetary motion can be stated as follows: (1) All planets
move about the Sun in elliptical orbits, having the Sun as one of the foci. (2) A
radius vector joining any planet to the Sun sweeps out equal areas in equal lengths
of time. (3) The squares of the sidereal periods (of revolution) of the planets are
directly proportional to the cubes of their mean distances from the Sun.
Knowledge of these laws, especially the second (the law of areas), proved crucial
to Sir Isaac Newton in 1684–85, when he formulated his famous law of
gravitation between Earth and the Moon and between the Sun and the planets,
postulated by him to have validity for all objects anywhere in the universe. Newton
Malto Jessica P. 12-Discipline March 17, 2019

showed that the motion of bodies subject to central gravitational force need not
always follow the elliptical orbits specified by the first law of Kepler but can take
paths defined by other, open conic curves; the motion can be in parabolic or
hyperbolic orbits, depending on the total energy of the body. Thus, an object of
sufficient energy—e.g., a comet—can enter the solar system and leave again
without returning. From Kepler’s second law, it may be observed further that
the angular momentum of any planet about an axis through the Sun and
perpendicular to the orbital plane is also unchanging.

Newton's law of planetary motion

The ancients believed that planets and other celestial bodies obeyed a different
set of laws from ordinary physical objects on the Earth. By the 17th century,
however, astronomers had realized that the Earth itself was a planet and that --
rather than being the fixed center of the universe -- it revolves around the sun
like any other planet. Armed with this new understanding, Newton developed an
explanation of planetary motion using the same physical laws that apply on Earth.

Sir Isaac Newton

Newton was born in Lincolnshire, England, in 1642. At the age of 27 he was

appointed professor of mathematics at Cambridge University. His particular
Malto Jessica P. 12-Discipline March 17, 2019

interest was the application of mathematical methods to the physical sciences.

Planetary motion was one of the most hotly debated topics of the time, and
Newton devoted much of his effort to developing a mathematical theory of this.
The result was his law of universal gravitation, which was first published in 1687.

The Motion of the Planets

In Newton's time, everything that was known about planetary motion could be
summarized succinctly in three laws attributed to Johannes Kepler. The first law
states that planets move around the sun on elliptical orbits. The second law states
that a planet sweeps out equal areas in equal times. According to the third law, the
square of the orbital period is proportional to the cube of the distance to the sun.
These are purely empirical laws, however. They describe what happens without
explaining why it happens.

Newton's Approach

Newton was convinced the planets must obey the same physical laws that are
observed on Earth. This meant there must be an unseen force acting on them. He
knew from experiment that, in the absence of an applied force, a moving body will
continue in a straight line forever. The planets, on the other hand, were moving in
elliptical orbits. Newton asked himself what sort of force would make them do this.
In a stroke of genius, he realized that the answer was gravity -- the very same
force that causes an apple to fall to the ground on Earth.

Universal Gravitation

Newton developed a mathematical formulation of gravity that explained both the

motion of a falling apple and that of the planets. He showed that the gravitational
force between any two objects is proportional to the product of their masses and
inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. When applied
to the motion of a planet around the sun, this theory explained all three of
Kepler's empirically derived laws.