A number of interesting demonstrations of circular and satellite motion have been described in this journal.1–4 This paper presents a variation of a centripetal force apparatus found in G.D. Freier and F.J. Anderson's A Demonstration Handbook for Physics,5 which has been modified in order to demonstrate both centripetal force and satellite motion. Nice discussions of satellite motion may be found in a number of textbooks.6–8 The following is a description of how to construct the apparatus and some suggested experiments.
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John D. Cutnell and Kenneth W. Johnson, Physics, 7th ed. (Wiley, Hoboken, NJ, 2004), p. 273.
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Paul W. Zitzewitz, Physics: Principles and Problems (Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, Columbus, OH, 1995), p. 157.
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David Halliday, Robert Resnick, and Jearl Walker, Fundamentals of Physics, 7th ed. (Wiley, Hoboken, NJ, 2004), p. 344.
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© 2008 American Association of Physics Teachers.
2008
American Association of Physics Teachers
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