Mass of Jupiter given a Moon's mass, orbital velocity and distance.

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Homework Help Overview

The problem involves calculating the mass of Jupiter based on the orbital characteristics of its moon Europa, specifically using its mass, orbital velocity, and distance from Jupiter's center. The context is rooted in gravitational physics and orbital mechanics.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory, Mathematical reasoning, Assumption checking

Approaches and Questions Raised

  • Participants discuss the application of the law of universal gravitation and the formula for orbital velocity. The original poster expresses confusion over the calculations and whether all provided information is necessary. Others mention using Kepler's third law and highlight potential calculator errors in the original poster's approach.

Discussion Status

The discussion is active, with participants offering hints and clarifications. The original poster has identified a potential error in their calculations and is reassessing their results based on feedback. There is no explicit consensus, but some participants have confirmed their results align with known values.

Contextual Notes

The original poster notes uncertainty about the relevance of all given data and expresses a desire for guidance without a complete solution. There is mention of rounding in the data provided by the professor, which may affect the results.

contrivance
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Hello all, been meaning to make an account here and participate but haven't been around to it. So sorry that my first post is asking for homework help! :|

Homework Statement


The planet Jupiter has a moon Europa (m = 5x10^22kg) that is orbiting at a velocity of 14,000m/s at a distance of 7x10^8m measured from the center of Jupiter to the center of the moon. What is the mass of Jupiter?



Homework Equations



According to the lecture notes for class, we have the law of universal gravitation F=\frac{Gm1m2}{r^2} and then the formula for "Velocity of a satellite in orbit" V=\sqrt{\frac{GM}{r}}. There's more things like field theory, etc but may not be relevant.


The Attempt at a Solution



I can't seem to get a good result, google says the mass of Jupiter is 1.898x10^27kg although when I plug the numbers into the velocity formula and solve for M, i keep getting a mere 205604.

This exact same question is posted on yahoo answers, but the first guy's solution is something beyond my course, and everyone else just doesn't seem to be right.

I'm stuck, not sure what formula/equation I need to use and what throws me is that with all the given information I'm not sure if it's all needed or if it's there for distraction.

I would really like just a quick hint to get me in the right direction instead of an entire work through :)
 
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The first guy uses Kepler's third law. The others use essentially your method. Their results are correct within the accuracy of the original data.
 
contrivance said:
when I plug the numbers into the velocity formula and solve for M, i keep getting a mere 205604.
Here's a hint:
Dividing by a-b means the same as multiplying by ab
 
voko said:
The first guy uses Kepler's third law. The others use essentially your method. Their results are correct within the accuracy of the original data.

I see, this makes sense now. Well after all this stress last night I discovered I was making a calculator error. putting too much information in at once and forgetting to put parenthesis where needed to get the correct result. I see that our result isn't actually that far off from Google's and my professor has been known to round given information up or down significantly.

I solved for M in the Velocity equation and ended up with about 2.0x10^27 as others did.

What's funny about that Yahoo answer post is I just noticed it was posted three days ago so it might have been posted by someone in my class.

Thanks friends!
 

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