Satellites- Understanding How They Work! MS
Topic outline
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Satellites- Understanding How They Work !
:Written By: Frances Dellutri, Middle School/Intermediate Level EIS Education Team, April 2016
EIS Topic: Atmosphere, Centripetal Force, Computers, Mathematics, Micro-gravity, Free-fall, Orbital Mechanics, Physics, Satellites, Spacecraft, Weightlessness
Grade (Age) Level: Grades 5-8 (Ages 10-13)
Key Topics Associated with Standards: Collecting, Analyzing and Interpreting Data; Gravitational Interactions; Forces and Motion, Relationship between Energy and Forces
This project will acquaint you and students with what satellites are, the forces that act on satellites, types of orbits satellites can be found circling Earth, and how to track satellites from the ground.The NSS Enterprise orbiter will be tracked upon launch in 2020 carrying 100+ student experiments! Learn about tracking satellites by using the Trek-A-Sat Activity.
Index:
1. What do you know about gravity?
2. Introduction to forces and gravitational pull here on Earth!
3. Understanding Centripetal Force
4. What is Weightlessness all about, anyway!
5. Satellites
6. Understanding satellite orbits.
7. Exit slip - Let's find out what you learned.-
Forum
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Take a simple pendulum - you have been in a swing many times- and let's look at how the pendulum works. There are forces responding to it, even if it doesn't move!
The mass of the pendulum is known as the 'bob,' the point at which the pendulum is hung is the 'pivot point,' and the distance from the pivot point to the bob is the 'length' of the pendulum. There are two dominant forces that act on a pendulum bob: 1. a downward force that is gravity (Earth's attraction pulling the bob down), and 2. the tension force acting upwards from the the bob to the pivot point and that the string pulling on the bob to hold it to the pivot point.
In this investigation, we will ignore air resistance as an influence on the bob's motion because it is relatively weak compared to the other two forces.
Let's get started with working a pendulum interactive. You can change the mass of the bob, and the length of the pendulum as well as comparing how your pendulum will move on Earth, Jupiter, the moon and 0 gravity! You can see that even Planet X has gravity. (Scientists believe there may be another planet or lots of asteroids way out beyond Pluto in the 'Kuiper Belt' that will account for the strange effects they see in planet orbits! So you can now understand that gravity goes very far from a star and that objects revolving around stars have a gravitational force as well.) If you wish to take data on how long the period takes (the time for the bob to make one swing from it's original position and returning to that position), that will reinforce the lesson.
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Click the link above and be sure and activate the velocity and acceleration directions. These directional forces are known as vectors. Try the pendulum on Earth, Jupiter, the moon, and 0 gravity!
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