Experiment involving Kepler's laws

[Shukie]

Hi all,

In physics class I recently got the assignment to conduct an experiment. It can be anything I want, as long as it involves a substantial amount of physics. I came up with the idea of doing something involving Kepler's laws. I thought it'd be interesting to use them to predict the position of several celestial objects in a month. I'd do all the theoretical work now and in a month I'd head out to see if my predictions were accurate. My question, would this be a feasibly experiment for a high school student or is the level of physics and math involved too much?

Kind regards,

Erwin

 

[kuruman]

An idea for an experiment is the starting point, but the immediate next step is the study the feasibility of bringing the idea to fruition.

Do you have the knowledge and expertise to carry it through in the given amount of time?
You may be a high school student, but if you are also an astronomy buff you probably know how to proceed with astronomical measurements and what they involve. However, you don't mention that astronomy is your hobby, so I assume that you don't know much about it. One month is not sufficient time to learn from scratch and without someone to teach you. Getting a telescope and learning how to use it to make measurements will eat up most of your time. Your post tells me that you don't know what you are getting into or how to plan your proposed experiment. You say

I'd do all the theoretical work now and in a month I'd head out to see if my predictions were accurate.

What predictions? How can you predict where an object will be one month from now without determining where it is right now? I don't want to appear that I am haranguing you so I will stop here. I think you should consider something else.