Orbits around and through a Sphere

Initializing live version
Download to Desktop

Requires a Wolfram Notebook System

Interact on desktop, mobile and cloud with the free Wolfram Player or other Wolfram Language products.

This Demonstration shows the orbit of a probe mass in the gravitational field of a homogeneous sphere. Assume that the particle can penetrate the sphere without frictional forces being exerted. Inside the sphere, the gravitational force forms a harmonic oscillator (potential ) and outside the sphere the potential is a pure Coulomb potential (potential ). In both cases, the orbits are ellipses. In case the orbit has segments inside and outside the sphere, rosette orbits are obtained.

Contributed by: Michael Trott with permission of Springer (March 2011)
From: The Mathematica GuideBook for Programming, second edition by Michael Trott (© Springer, 2008).
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA


Snapshots


Details

detailSectionParagraph


Feedback (field required)
Email (field required) Name
Occupation Organization
Note: Your message & contact information may be shared with the author of any specific Demonstration for which you give feedback.
Send