Welcome to the website of ME 274 for the Fall 2008 semester. On this site you can view blog posts, add your own blog posts and add comments to existing posts. In addition to the blog are links to course material: course information, information on solution videos, exams, quizzes, homeworks and other course-related material. Direct links to the homework solution videos are also available on the left side of this page.


The following is a reverse chronological order listing of the posts for the course blog. To add a post, click here (when adding posts, be sure to add a "label" in the box at the lower right side of the post window). To add a comment to an existing post, click on the "Comments" link below the post.


____________________________________________________

Oct 6, 2008

General Orbit and Weightlessness

All

I like to think of weightlessness and orbit in this sense. If you are orbiting the Earth, your body feels as if it is falling towards the planet. If your velocity is large enough and normal to the gravitational acceleration vector you'll be in orbit.

If your velocity is too big you escape the acceleration of gravity and shoot off into space. Too small and you hit the ground before making it past the curve of the Earth.

You will continue falling forever, but by the time you would have hit the ground, your velocity has moved you past the curve of the planet and are now falling all over again.

Alex T.
Posted by at
Labels:

1 comment:

CMK said...

Good post with figure and explanation.

FYI, this is a very good example of a way to get "posting interesting material related to the course" blog points. This post is worth 20 points.

Thanks for posting.

October 7, 2008 at 7:54 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)