Space Studies Tuesday: Lesson 3-2 Gravitation and Mechanics

I hope that folks are reading along with the JPL class with me.  Today's lesson can be found at http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/bsf3-2.php.

To supplement, I went to YouTube, which is my new BFF for these lessons, and found these videos.  You can watch them first, then read the lesson, or visa-versa.  I didn't get into non-Newtonian physics because, as noted in the lesson, we don't achieve speeds fast enough to really take relativity into account, except in small or experimental cases.

A little about Sir Isaac Newton and his Principia Mathematica:

Here's an explanation of Newton's Three Laws of Motion:

And here it's applied to a liquid fuel rocket:


I hope you're enjoying Space Studies Tuesday.  I have been.  I'm going to look for some other classes we can do online after this one.  I considered the Rocket Propulsion class mentioned in this lesson, but it's equation heavy, and I'm not sure everyone would be interested in going through all the math.