What did you change in the model?
Labs / Astronomy
Escape Velocity Launcher
Drag upward on the planet to load a launch speed, then let go to fire a shot straight up. Gravity weakens with distance, so the projectile keeps coasting even as it slows — the question is whether it ever runs out of speed and falls back. Rebuild the planet with the mass & radius sliders and hunt for the threshold where it finally escapes for good.
Labs / Astronomy / Escape Velocity Launcher
Escape Velocity Launcher
Drag upward on the planet to load a launch speed, then let go to fire a shot straight up. Gravity weakens with distance, so the projectile keeps coasting even as it slows — the question is whether it ever runs out of speed and falls back. Rebuild the planet with the mass & radius sliders and hunt for the threshold where it finally escapes for good.
Why it matters
Why explore this?
Astronomy uses patterns in light and motion to explain objects we cannot touch directly. This model lets you change one part of a space system and see what the evidence would look like.
Explore
Try the model
v 11.00 km/salt 0 kmv_esc 11.19 km/sg 9.8 m/s²Climbing
Investigate
Questions to test
Predict first, try it in the model, then use what you observe to answer.
What to try
- Set the launch speed just below the escape velocity readout. How high does the peak marker climb before it turns around?
- Keep the mass fixed and shrink the radius. Why does packing the same mass into a smaller world make it harder to escape?
- On Jupiter, can you reach escape velocity at all with this launcher? What does that tell you about giant planets?
- Double a planet's mass. Does the escape velocity double too, or grow more slowly?
- Once a shot has clearly escaped, watch the speed gauge — why does it level off at a value above zero instead of dropping to nothing?
Explain
Make sense of what happened
Look for a cause-and-effect rule: what did you change, what responded, and what stayed the same? Astronomers use those patterns to infer how distant systems work.
Check
Before you leave
What visible evidence changed?
What rule could explain that change?
If you can answer all three using evidence from the model, you understand the main idea. If not, return to Explore and change one setting at a time.