Suppose that a comet that was seen in 563 a. d. by chinese astronomers was spotted again in year 1951. assume the time between observations is the period of the comet and take its eccentricity as 0.986. what are (a) the semimajor axis of the comet's orbit and (b) its greatest distance from the sun?

Explanation:

The period of the comet is the time it takes to do a complete orbit:

T=1951-(-563)=2514 years

writen in seconds:

Since the eccentricity is greater than 0 but lower than 1 you can know that the trajectory is an ellipse.

Therefore, if the mass of the sun is aprox. 1.99e30 kg, and you assume it to be much larger than the mass of the comet, you can use Kepler's law of periods to calculate the semimajor axis:

Then, using the law of orbits, you can calculate the greatest distance from the sun, which is called aphelion:

air exerts forces on falling objects near earth’s surface.

explanation:

the term 'free falls' refer to object that are falling towards the earth, in a situation in which gravity is the only force acting on the object.

for an object in free fall, the acceleration is constant (g, the gravitational acceleration), and so the velocity of the object constantly increases.

for objects near earth's surface, there is always another force acting on the object: the resistance due to the air. this force is opposed to the direction of fall of the object, and it is proportional to the velocity of the object, so as the object falls down, this force increases up to a point when it balances the force of gravity, and the object continues its motion at constant velocity (called terminal velocity). since in this case gravity is not the only force acting on the object, we are not in a situation of free fall.

see the picture for the vector

the magnitude of the vector by pythagorean theorem

r = √( (-10)^2 + (3)^2 ) = √109

magnitude = √109 units

the direction angle between vector and x-axis is

tan^(-1)(3/10) = 16.699

so the direction is approximately 16.7 degrees north of west