Kepler’s Laws

1. A planet orbits the sun in an elliptical path with the sun at one of the foci.

2. The area swept out by a planet radially from the sun over a fixed period of time is
constant. (Hence the planets vary their speed as orbit the sun; planets travel faster when
they are closer to the sun.)

3. The square of the orbital period is proportional to the cube of the semimajor axis of the
orbit.

Newton’s Laws

1. F = ma

2. Suppose a point mass M is located at the origin (0, 0) and a point mass m is located
at ( x, y ) . If we let r denote the vector ( x, y ) and r denote the length of this vector (i.e.,
r  x 2  y 2 ), then the gravitation force that M exerts on m is given by

Mm
F  G r
r3
where G is a universal constant, independent of M , m , and r.

Angular Momentum of planet about the origin is conserved

Suppose a point mass M is located at the origin (0, 0) and a point mass m is located at
( x, y ) . Suppose that at all times, there is a central force acting on m (i.e., a force
always in the direction of r = ( x, y ) . Note r is the position of mass m relative to M. By
Newton’s law of universal gravitation, gravity is such a force. Let v = r  = ( x, y ) be the
velocity vector of m .
Define the angular momentum of m2 to be L = r × mv . Then

L  0
Areas swept out are constant (Kepler’s Second Law)

The key challenge here is express the area swept out in a given amount of time. The
most convincing way I know is to express it in polar coordinates based at the origin.

Define r = r (cos  i  sin  j ) . NOTE: r and  are functions of time.  is relative to

some (arbitrary) fixed ray.

Now the area swept out by m2 from time 0 to time t is given by

 (t )
A 1 2
r d
 (0) 2

Taking the derivative with respect to time we get

A  12 r 2 

Now taking the derivative of r = r (cos  i  sin  j ) , we find

v = r (cos  i  sin  j )  r (  sin  i  cos  j )

So

L = v = r × mv
= r (cos  i  sin  j ) × m  r (cos  i  sin  j )  r (  sin  i  cos  j ) 
 mr 2 k

Hence

L
A  12 r 2    constant
2m

where L denotes the magnitude of the constant angular momentum vector.

Another way of approaching this is to think about the incremental area swept out as one
half of the area of the parallelogram formed by r and Δr , i.e.,

ΔA  12 | r  r |

Then
 A 1 r
 2 r
t t

In the limit,

dA 1 L
 2 r v 
dt 2m