Question

One of Kepler's three laws of planetary motion states that the square of the period, P, of a body orbiting the sun is proportional to the cube of its average distance, d, from the sun. The Earth has a period of 365 days and its distance from the sun is approximately 93,000,000 miles.
(a) Find P as a function of d.
P(d)=


(b) The planet Mercury has an average distance from the sun of 36,000,000 miles. How many earth days are in a Mercury year -- in other words, what is the period of the planet Mercury?___
days (Round to nearest day and do not enter commas in your answer.)

Answer 1

@dan815

Answer 2

@nincompoop

Answer 3

So all we need to do is plug in the values for d and time in the Kepler equation to get proportionality constant K. Then you can write general equation P=kR^3