Learners use water balloons and a length of string to understand how gravity and the velocity of a spacecraft balance to form an orbit. They see that when the velocity becomes too great for gravity to hold onto an object, the object escapes the gravity of the sun or planet that it orbits.

Concepts

engineering, gravity, velocity, stem

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Additional Tags

elliptical transfer, orbit, integrated teaching and learning program and laboratory, teachengineering, teachengineering: the great gravity escape

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Classroom Considerations

• Knovation Readability Score: 4 (1 low difficulty, 5 high difficulty)
• The intended use for this resource is Instructional