9. Suborbital Motion

• C++ and Python starting points for in-class exercises 9.1 and 9.2

• Vectors in C++ and Python
  • a C++ 3D vector class and test program
  • 2-D motion under gravity, C++ vector version
  • vectors in Python using numpy
  • 2-D motion under gravity, numpy version

• In-class exercise 9.1

      (a) curvature of Earth's surface

      (b) inverse-square law of gravity

• earthplot and earthplot2 are simple gnuplot scripts to plot Earth-scale orbits; download them and make them executable before using them in place of gpl)

• In-class exercise 9.2

      (a) including air resistance

      (b) shooting into orbit: escape velocity

• Each of the above steps should require changes to only a few lines of your program. However, by the end, you should be ready to leave Earth behind and study real orbital mechanics!