Practical exercise 6: CALCULATING THE ESCAPE VELOCITY FOR THE CELESTIAL BODIES WITH DIFFERENT MASSES

Aim:

To better understand the scale of escape velocities for celestial bodies of different mass.

Instructions for the teacher:

Based on data for the masses and radii of various celestial bodies from the Solar system (including the Sun), other stars, the students have to calculate the respective escape velocities and sort them in ascending order (from lower to higher). This will clearly show the scale of the velocities. The necessary data for this exercise ca be found on various sites and pages in internet (like Wikipedia for example).

Additionall activities:

1. Shoot a cannonball into orbit: https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/how-orbits-work/en/#