LAB-- Kepler's Third Law

Looking through your telescope you discover a solar system with six planets. (Your telescope image is digitized at this site.) You wish to determine the mass of the star at the focus of the planetary motion. You decide to use Kepler's Third Law to do so.

DATA:

You recruit a fellow scientist to help you analyze the image that has been digitized by your computer, HAL. You and your colleague decide that HAl has recorded distance in ________ and time in _________. While this is fine for Hal, you must find the mass in kilograms which requires distance in meters and time in seconds.

CONVERSION:

So you recruit a third colleague to act as your computer expert. This colleague will use a spreadsheet such as EXCEL or Graphical Analysis to convert your data to the correct units.

ANALYSIS:

So the three of you confer and realize that a mathematician is needed for your team. This fourth member of your team must create a graph (Graphical Analysis) that utilizes the power of Kepler's Third Law. Your mathematician confers with the team and decides to produce a graph of _____________ vs ____________ for the six trials you record data. The slope of your graph is quite critical. Discuss this with your team. (What should you graph and why is the slope so important?)

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Now you are ready to take data. Your tools are the "digitized image"and a computer or graphing calculator.

To obtain two new planets to analyze, press "NEW" and HAL obeys!

RESULTS:

Confer with your team and decide how to use the value of "K" to obtain the mass of the sun which the planets orbit. Write a short description here of how you will do this.

 

 

 

What is your value of Kepler's Constant for this system? _________________

 

What is the mass of this sun? (Show your ste-up for calculations!) _____________________