Investigating Motion of Rockets & Satellites: Advanced Mechanics Depth Study

[mani88]

Homework Statement

Hi, I just got my first year 12 assignment which is a depth study of advanced mechanics. I had one idea of investigating the motion of rockets and satellites. I could even do something with circular motion or projectile motion, taking air resistance into consideration. I just don't what to do or how to start. I wanna try to do something unique and creative that's challenging but not too insane. Please take into consideration that I have to conduct the experiment within 2 hours and use equipment that's widely available and not too expensive Does anyone have any recommendations on what I could do? Please tell me something that's doable, the actual investigation I can make on my own. Thanks! :)

Relevant Equations

I can do an investigation on anything related to the following topics.
Projectile motion
2.2 The trajectory of a projectile
2.3 Investigating projectile motion
2.4 Modelling projectile motion

Circular motion
3.1 Uniform circular motion
3.2 Applications of the uniform circular motion model
3.3 Energy and work in uniform circular motion
3.4 Rotation and torque

Motion in gravitational fields
4.1 The gravitational force and the gravitational field
4.2 The orbits of planets and satellites
4.3 Kepler’s laws
4.4 Energy in gravitational fields

Homework Statement: Hi, I just got my first year 12 assignment which is a depth study of advanced mechanics. I had one idea of investigating the motion of rockets and satellites. I could even do something with circular motion or projectile motion, taking air resistance into consideration. I just don't what to do or how to start. I want to try to do something unique and creative that's challenging but not too insane. Please take into consideration that I have to conduct the experiment within 2 hours and use equipment that's widely available and not too expensive Does anyone have any recommendations on what I could do? Please tell me something that's doable, the actual investigation I can make on my own. Thanks! :)
Homework Equations: I can do an investigation on anything related to the following topics.
Projectile motion
2.2 The trajectory of a projectile
2.3 Investigating projectile motion
2.4 Modelling projectile motion

Circular motion
3.1 Uniform circular motion
3.2 Applications of the uniform circular motion model
3.3 Energy and work in uniform circular motion
3.4 Rotation and torque

Motion in gravitational fields
4.1 The gravitational force and the gravitational field
4.2 The orbits of planets and satellites
4.3 Kepler’s laws
4.4 Energy in gravitational fields

I was thinking of doing an investigation on the motion of rockets and satellites but I don't know how that's possible to conduct an experiment on. I know I can use a computer simulation but that's pretty lame and I want to do something practical. Other than that the only thing that's left if projectile motion and circular motion, which would be a good topic to do an investigation on.

Thanks

 

[lightlightsup]

Do precession. It'll blow everyone's mind away.
You can buy a top and a small gyroscope to demonstrate.
You can calculate the direction of precession with some vector logic being done on your hands/fingers. (L is τing towards the τ vector continuously).
It'll even blow your mind away because as Walter Lewin of YouTube and MIT fame says: this is not intuitive at all, none of this is intuitive, none of it. He calls it the least intuitive topic in all of physics.

 

[mani88]

Thank you so much for your reply, but I've decided to investigate the effect of radius on centripetal force using a conical pendulum. :)