This activity provides a memorable demonstration of motion in a circle and demonstrates the need for an inward centripetal...

Classroom Activity 11-14

To explore the range and variety of the uses of satellites.

Classroom Activity 11-14

Here you compare the distance the satellite is carried sideways away from the Earth by its own motion and the distance that it...

Classroom Activity 11-14

Here you look at the performance of a satellite camera.

Classroom Activity 11-14

Some satellites send out pulses, and then time how long these pulses take to return, in order to see what lies beneath them...

Classroom Activity 11-14

This is a class activity, making a physical model of the GPS that uses three measurements to plots positions.

Classroom Activity 11-14

Over the last 50 years, satellites have become as commonplace as other tools of technology before them, such as clocks...

Physics Narrative 11-14

The centripetal force is interesting in that it acts at right angles to the direction of travel of the object moving along a...

Physics Narrative 11-14

Perhaps the first question to think about is how they get into orbit in the first place. Let's try a thought experiment that...

Physics Narrative 11-14

Satellites can operate in several different types of Earth orbit. A geostationary orbit is one in which the satellite is...

Physics Narrative 11-14

A satellite that stays above one place on the Earth's surface has to sit above the Equator. Then the centre of the circle...

Physics Narrative 11-14

Covering the whole of the Earth with communications satellites requires a minimum of three satellites evenly distributed.

Physics Narrative 11-14