D1 practical: Orbit simulation (Algodoo)
When a body is in a circular orbit round another one the centripetal force required for the circular motion is provided by the gravitational attraction, by equating these terms we can find a value for the speed,v of the orbit. In reality the value of G is 6.67 x 10-11 Nm2kg-2 this means that orbits around low mass objects would be very slow, In Algodoo you can vary the gravitational constant to speed things up a bit.