The physics underneath

09: The physics underneath

Status: planned. This module is scoped but not yet written. The scope below is the commitment; it is here so you can see where the curriculum is going and tell us if the plan is wrong.

The mechanics that has been doing the work all along, made explicit.

Planned lessons

• Newton's law of gravitation, and where the inverse square comes from
• Why orbits are conic sections
• Kepler's three laws, derived rather than asserted
• Angular momentum and why the Moon is receding
• Energy, escape velocity, and why orbits are hard to change

Prerequisites

• Module 03
• comfort with algebra; calculus optional

Intended approach

Mostly prose and small numerical experiments. Some derivations at Advanced layer, all results usable without them.

Want this sooner?

Say so in Discussions, demand genuinely reorders the queue. Better still, write a lesson: see CONTRIBUTING.md. A single lesson following the lab pattern is a complete, useful contribution.

If you want to work through this material now without waiting, say so in Discussions and someone will point you at good sources. The reading list is not the bottleneck; the lab-shaped version is.