Educator Onboarding
LEO Art Challenge Workshop
ICE 2019: Satellite Tracking, Orbits, and Modeling
SEEC 2019: Satellite Tracking, Orbits, and Modeling
Workshop:ITEC Trek-a-Sat
Workshop: 2018-01-27 Yerkes
Workshop: 2017-10-28 Carthage-Yerkes Electrostatics in Space
Workshop: 2017-06-29-BTCI-Life in Space!
Workshop: 2017-03-11 Yerkes
Workshop: 2017-02-07 SEEC
Workshop: 2017-01-28 Yerkes
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Educational Learning
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Documentation
Satellites- Understanding How They Work! MS
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Satellites- Understanding How They Work!
Updated August 2023
Written By: Frances Dellutri, Middle School/Intermediate Level SpacEdge Education Team, April 2016
SpacEdge Topic: Atmosphere, Centripetal Force, Computers, Mathematics, Micro-gravity, Free-fall, Orbital Mechanics, Physics, Satellites, Spacecraft, Weightlessness
Grade (Age) Level: Grades 5-8 (Ages 10-13)
Key Topics Associated with Standards: Collecting, Analyzing and Interpreting Data; Gravitational Interactions; Forces and Motion, Relationship between Energy and Forces
US Standards: NGSS
MS-ESS1-2 http://www.nextgenscience.org/pe/ms-ess1-2-earths-place-universe
MS-ESS1-3 http://www.nextgenscience.org/pe/ms-ess1-3-earths-place-universe
Learn about tracking satellites by using the Trek-A-Sat Activity found in SpacEdge Academy Grades 5-8 Level.
This project will acquaint you with the forces that affect satellites, weightlessness, and the types of satellite orbits. From gravitational pull to scale readings and weight, students will gain an in-depth understanding of many different properties of physics and their application on the satellites orbiting around the Earth.
Index:
1. What do you know about gravity?
2. Introduction to forces and gravitational pull here on Earth!
3. Understanding Centripetal Force
4. What is Weightlessness all about, anyway!
5. Satellites
6. Understanding satellite orbits.
7. Exit slip - Let's find out what you learned.
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Take a simple pendulum - you have been in a swing many times- and let's look at how the pendulum works. There are forces responding to it, even if it doesn't move!
The mass of the pendulum is known as the 'bob,' the point at which the pendulum is hung is the 'pivot point,' and the distance from the pivot point to the bob is the 'length' of the pendulum. There are two dominant forces that act on a pendulum bob: 1. a downward force that is gravity (Earth's attraction pulling the bob down), and 2. the tension force acting upwards from the the bob to the pivot point and that the string pulling on the bob to hold it to the pivot point.
In this investigation, we will ignore air resistance as an influence on the bob's motion because it is relatively weak compared to the other two forces.
Let's get started with working a pendulum interactive. You can change the mass of the bob, and the length of the pendulum as well as comparing how your pendulum will move on Earth, Jupiter, the moon and 0 gravity! You can see that even Planet X has gravity. (Scientists believe there may be another planet or lots of asteroids way out beyond Pluto in the 'Kuiper Belt' that will account for the strange effects they see in planet orbits! So you can now understand that gravity goes very far from a star and that objects revolving around stars have a gravitational force as well.) If you wish to take data on how long the period takes (the time for the bob to make one swing from it's original position and returning to that position), that will reinforce the lesson.
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Click the link above and be sure and activate the velocity and acceleration directions. These directional forces are known as vectors. Try the pendulum on Earth, Jupiter, the moon, and 0 gravity!
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