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The position of the planet can be given by
a
vector, r, and we'll call it r1 because
it's a moment in time.
A little bit later, the planet has moved
its position.
To a place r2 at
time two.
And in fact, these are supposed to be the
same,
it's supposed to be the same size circle,
but, you know.
Now you can see that there has been a
change in
the position of the planet from time one
to time two.
And, we can see what that change is by
just drawing these two vectors,
r1 looks reasonable.
R2
looks reasonable.
And now, as we did before with
subtraction, this
becomes our change in r.
If
you go from r1 to r2 you have to add
this little amount.
Which is delta r.
And, the angle between these two positions
can be denoted by theta.
Now, what's happening as this planet is
moving around?
Not only is it changing its position, the
reason that it's changing its position is
because
it's moving.
And I think you can convince yourself that
the velocity of the planet must be denoted
by
a vector that is perpendicular to the
position.
Why does it have to be perpendicular, hm?
Well, I'm not going to answer that
question for you.
I want you to see on your own if you can
convince yourself that it has
to be perpendicular, and it can't be
something
going in this direction or in this
direction.
It must be at a right angle to the
position R1.
We can call that vector, the velocity
vector.
And just like we have a velocity at
time one, we also have a velocity at
time two.
Also perpendicular
to r2, okay?
And, if it's in
uniform circular motion, the lengths of
these
two vectors must be the same.
If they
weren't the same, then the motion, would
not be in
a circle.
Something would be happening, to the
position of this point, versus this point,
so that you would not be able to get
from r1 to r2 if the speed of the object
were actually changing.
But now let's look carefully at v1
and v2, if we draw v1,
over here, and we draw v2
over here.
We're going to have in exactly the same
fashion as we had a delta
r in this situation.
We're going to have a delta v
right over here.
And guess what that angle is, gang?
That angle is theta.
Why?
Convince yourself that this
angle has to be the same as this angle for
r.
So what we are faced with are two similar
triangles.
In which we can now look at various sides
and
see if we can come up with a relationship
for the acceleration.
I want to point out one very important
thing.
Look at the direction of delta v.
Delta v is pointing back in towards the
center of the circle.
And this will be a key point when we
look at how this relates to the
gravitational force.
So our
vector and as v1 gets closer and closer to
v2, namely a
smaller and smaller interval of time of,
is, observed to elapse.
Delta v gets closer and closer to being
pointed exactly towards the center of the
circle.
Okay, so let's look at these two
triangles, what we're after,
is an expression for the acceleration.
And the acceleration is
the change in velocity divided by the
change in time.
Now, velocity already contains a time,
right?
It's just the time rate of change of
position.