Why do Kepler's Laws work? In this lecture I will describe Newton's
generalization of Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion so that they will
apply to any two massive bodies orbiting around their common center of
mass. I will introduce families of open and closed orbits, the circular
and escape speeds, center-of-mass, conservation of angular momentum, and
New ... Show More
Oct 2007
Lecture 17: On the Shoulders of Giants: Isaac Newton and the Laws of Motion
Copernicus, Kepler, Tycho, and Galileo together gave us a new way of
looking at the motions in the heavens, but they could not explain why
the planets move they way the do. It was to be the work of Isaac Newton
who was to sweep away the last vestiges of the Aristotelian view of t ... Show More
44m 47s