Deducing Kepler's second law from Newton's laws?

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SUMMARY

This discussion focuses on deriving Kepler's second law from Newton's laws of gravitation using the concept of angular momentum. The key conclusion is that by keeping the sun at the origin and analyzing the position vector of a planet, one can demonstrate that the area swept out by the planet is constant over equal time intervals. The mathematical derivation involves the use of vector calculus, specifically the cross product, to show that the rate of area change is a constant vector, thereby confirming Kepler's second law.

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  • Newton's laws of gravitation
  • Vector calculus, specifically cross products
  • Concept of angular momentum
  • Understanding of central forces in physics
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vinicius0197
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I've searched a little bit and found that I can derive kepler's third law from Newton's law of gravitation. That's okay. But I want to deduce kepler's second law too: "An imaginary line joining a planet and the sun sweeps out an equal area of space in equal amounts of time".
I know it's possible to do that using angular momentum, and from there proving that angular momentum in this case is constant. But how would I do that?
 
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vinicius0197 said:
I've searched a little bit and found that I can derive kepler's third law from Newton's law of gravitation. That's okay. But I want to deduce kepler's second law too: "An imaginary line joining a planet and the sun sweeps out an equal area of space in equal amounts of time".
I know it's possible to do that using angular momentum, and from there proving that angular momentum in this case is constant. But how would I do that?
vinicius0197 said:
I've searched a little bit and found that I can derive kepler's third law from Newton's law of gravitation.
That's okay. But I want to deduce kepler's second law too: "An imaginary line joining a planet and the sun sweeps out an equal area of space in equal amounts of time".
I know it's possible to do that using angular momentum, and from there proving that angular momentum in this case is constant. But how would I do that?

Keep the sun at the origin. At any time t let ##\vec { r(t)}## be the position vector of a planet. At the moment t+dt the position vector will be ##\vec {r (t)}+\vec{dr (t)}##. So within the interval of time dt the planet sweeps out an area ## \vec{da}= \frac {1}{2} \vec{r (t)}\times\vec{dr (t)} \Rightarrow \vec{\frac{da}{dt}}= \frac {1}{2} \vec{r (t)}\times\vec{\frac{dr}{dt}} ## Now you know that Newton's gravitational force is central in nature or mathematically ## \frac {d^2\vec{r}}{dt^2} = f (r)\vec{r} \Rightarrow \vec{r}\times \frac {d^2\vec{r}}{dt^2} = \vec{0}\Rightarrow \frac {d}{dt}(\vec{r (t)}\times\vec{\frac{dr}{dt}})=\vec{0}\Rightarrow \frac{d}{dt}(\vec{\frac{da}{dt}})=\vec{0} ## So, ##\vec{\frac{da}{dt}}## is a constant vector. This is Kepler's second law.
 
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