Cannon and Satellites – What Happens as the Speed of the Cannonball Increases?
Adjust speed:
⇔ (You can also change it by dragging the scale)
Sound
Description :
On this page, you can adjust the speed of a cannonball fired from a cannon and explore its trajectory.
Consider firing a cannonball horizontally from the top of a high mountain. Newton imagined that if the launch speed were increased, the cannonball might continuously fall but never reach the ground because of the Earth's curvature — instead orbiting the planet. If that were possible, how fast would it need to be?
To explore this, let's place a hypothetical cannon at an altitude of 400 km (roughly the same height as the International Space Station) and use a simulation that computes and displays the equations of motion to see what happens when cannonballs are fired at various speeds.
● You can change the projectile’s initial speed using the slider in the lower‑left corner or the fine‑adjustment buttons.
● Press the "Fire" button to shoot the cannonball.
● Adjust the scale using the slider at the lower-right corner to zoom out and view regions including geostationary satellite and lunar orbits.
● Adjust the time speed using the "Fast/Slow" button.
● Press the "Strobo" button to see the orbit shape.
● Press the "Reset" button to restore the pre-launch state.
● Toggle the "Sound" checkbox to turn the sound on/off.
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