Kyle Leeson

McLaughlin
PHY 208
10/5/15

Introduction
Around 100 AD, Claudius Ptolemy lived in Rome and came up with a model of the
universe that would last for hundreds of years: the geocentric model (or Ptolemaic system). This
model was intended to represent the rotation of the planets and sun around the Earth in an
accurate way. For hundreds of years people believed in this model without much question, after
all human beings like to think highly of themselves, so the Earth should be the center of the
universe. That being said, many of our calculations and perceptions of the universe were wrong.
Eventually, Nicolaus Copernicus developed the heliocentric model of the solar system, which
meant that the Sun was the center of the solar system. His model made huge advances in
understanding how the planets (including the Earth) revolved around the sun; however, his
model wasnt perfect because he was not able to figure out the exact shape of the rotation around
the Sun although he knew it was round. Eventually, Kepler discovered the formula or shape of
the rotation to be an ellipse, but could not figure out the cause of the rotation. Finally, Sir Isaac
Newton came up with his three laws of motion which both explained Keplers laws of planetary
motion and also verified motion for any motion and forces. Because of all these men building
information and knowledge from one another, perfecting thoughts and theories about the
universe, today we now understand planetary and gravitational motion.

Theory

I am going to use Newtons simplified version of Keplers 3rd law to show that all
motions and forces, even one millions of miles away, obey Newtons law. Keplers 3rd law stated
that orbital period of the object squared divided by the semi major axis (the distance between the
two objects) cubed was equal to 4 times pi squared divided by a gravitational constant times the
sum of the two objects. In formulaic terms, it looked like this T2/a3= 42/(G*(M1 + M2)
respectively. Then Newton discovered that because the Sun is much larger compared to the other
planets that there would be such a miniscule difference in mass. So Newton simplified the right
hand side of Keplers formula to (M1 + M2)/ Mass of the Sun. With this everything follows the
laws of gravitational motion.
Methods
In order to accurately research whether Newtons law holds throughout space, I am going
to observe Jupiter and its moons. Clearly spending restless cold nights observing and recording
Jupiter and its moons placements would be very time consuming and full of potential error.
Therefore, I will be using a program called CLEA which simulates the motion of Jupiter and its
moons about it. I am going to find out the As and Ps (semimajor axis of the orbit and period of
the orbit) by using CLEAs clicking options. I will be able to click on the placement of a moon
when its furthest from the Jupiter and the center of Jupiter and CLEA will give me its
coordinates. With the x coordinates, I can determine the distance in pixels then convert them to
kilometers by using Jupiters radius as a standard and then into AUs. This will get me the
semimajor axis of the moons orbit. Then to find period of the orbit of the moons, I can click on
the furthest distance of a moon to Jupiter to get its x coordinate. I will then press the play button
on CLEA which will show the moons orbiting Jupiter. Then I will pause it when the moon is on
the furthest opposite side of Jupiter. I will record the time change and multiply it by two so I

have a full orbit time instead of half an orbit. Then I can convert it to years, and finally I can use
Newtons formula and validate that it holds true. I will repeat this process with the other three
moons.

Results
During my research, I was able to get the coordinates of all four moons when they were
furthest from Jupiter. I kept the magnification at 100X which allowed me to see the four moons
of Jupiter without having to reconvert my units or magnify any further. Once I had that, I was
able to use Jupiters semimajor axis to convert the pixel units into real distances in kilometers.
Following this conversion, I was able to record the amount of time, in hours, it took the moons to
rotate around Jupiter then I doubled it to find how long it took for the moons to rotate completely

around Jupiter. After recording all this data, which I put in excel, I converted the hours taken to
orbit Jupiter and converted them into years by dividing them by 8760 (the amount of hours in a
year). I also converted the semimajor axis of the moons into astronomical units by dividing them
by 149600000 (the number of kilometers in an AU). Finally I applied the Newtons formula
(Semimajor axis cubed divided by period of orbit squared) and converted it to Solar Mass Units.
With this I came to the results:

As can be seen, Io resulted in 1.85845E+27, Europa resulted in 2.0935E+27, Gamymede resulted

in 1.68544E+27, and Callisto resulted in 1.99454E+27 all in Solar Mass Units. With this
information I was able to get an average/mean of all these at approximately 1.90798E+27. Then I
took the Solar Mass results of each moon and subtracted the mean from them and squared the
result. Then I took the mean of all the squares, and I lastly took the square root of the squared
mean which got me the standard deviation 1.53204E+26. It turns out that all of the moons are
within one standard deviation from the mean which means that they are not far outliers from the

data. This means that all my calculations were generally correct and with this shows that
Newtons 3 law holds true. Finally, I went into our astronomy book and checked the masses,
orbitals, and semimajor axes and the data in the book were copasetic with my results (you can go
online to verify as well) (Koupelis).
Conclusion
In conclusion, we have proved that Newtons generalization of Kelpers third law of
planetary motion holds true throughout the universe by proof of Jupiters moons. We first took
the semimajor axis of Jupiters moons and the amount of time it takes them to rotate amongst
Jupiter. We then converted units in AUs and years, then we applied the Newtons formula to the
data and all the results were within one standard deviation of accurate information. With all this
data it is clear that both my methods and procedures to reach my results were accurate and
efficient. Since Jupiters moons follow the Newtons law, Newtons generalization of Keplers
third law hold true!

Works Cited
Koupelis, Theo. In Quest of the Universe. 6th ed. Sudbury, Mass.: Jones and Bartlett, 2007. Print.