This week we focused on why we don’t crash into the sun and why the moon doesn’t crash into us. We used force diagrams and saw that we should crash into the sun and the moon should crash into us. What causes the moon not to crash into us? Why don’t we crash into the sun?
We used this Orbital Simulator to see why. Since the earth is moving at a certain velocity, it is not completely pulled into the sun but it orbits the sun. Same with the moon, it has an initial velocity, the earth pulls it in but because of the velocity it orbits the earth. If an object escapes the pull, that is called an escape velocity. When you were small and played with those racecar tracks, you would push the racecars and they would move around the track. That is like a planet orbiting.
As you can see racecars use the track just like a planet orbits the sun. If a car goes too fast, it can crash or go off the track.
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