I remember that from physics class: Kepler's third law relates the orbital period squared to the semi-major axis cubed, and for a geostationary satellite, the period must match Earth's rotation, 24 hours. You plug that into the formula with Newton's gravitational constant and Earth's mass to solve for the distance, which comes to about 36,000 km from Earth's centre. Honestly, though, I only truly grasped it when my teacher made us calculate it during a sweltering *susegad* afternoon, the numbers swimming in the heat as I wished I was helping my father mix ink colours instead.
#random#life
Jump in to reply — no account needed.