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Physical Constants

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Introduction

 

The ScientificConstants package contains values of physical constants. A  list of constants can be found here.

Use GetConstant to get the definition of the gravitational constant.

(1)

To just return the numerical value,

(2)

 

Example - Radius of a Geostationary Orbit

 

The expression for circular orbital velocity around a spherically symmetric body is:

 

where, G is the gravitational constant, M is the mass of the body, and R is the radius of orbit.

 

Now, for geostationary orbit, an orbital velocity of 2 π R meters per day is required, which in meters per second is:

(3)

Equate this to .

(4)

 

Solve for R. To disregard the non-real solutions, use the RealDomain package.

(5)

Replace G with its value and M with the mass of the Earth, then evaluate.

 

(6)

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