Tomas Angelini Posted March 19, 2017 Report Share Posted March 19, 2017 Hi everyone! This is my first post here so I hope I'm not doing anything wrong. I've decided that I'm going to be writing a Physics EE on an asteroid impact with our Moon, and how fast it would have to be travelling to send the Moon on an escape trajectory from the Earth. I want my main focus of the EE to be on being able to describe the collision between an asteroid and our moon using parameters such as mass, velocity, momentum, kinetic and potential energy, and other more specific parameters in orbital mechanics such as orbital velocity, escape velocity, relativistic mass and momentum, and others. Because this is highly theoretical and couldn't have an experiment done, I wanted to write a computer program that would test different impacts using different velocities for the asteroid and seeing how massive the asteroid would have to be in order to send the Moon out of its orbit around the Earth. In the end of the investigation I would also want to include a section looking at the "consequences" of this hypothetical impact (i.e. how much heat energy would be released and how the Earth would be impacted, the consequences of not having a moon assuming that the Earth isn't completely annihilated by the heat energy, etc. ) My research question for this topic right now is: How massive would an asteroid have to be, and at what velocity would it have to be travelling at, so that on a head-on collision with the Moon would launch the Moon out of its orbit around the Earth? I was hoping that you guys could give me any feedback regarding this idea, tell me anything I should look out for since I'm not actually doing an experiment, and let me know in general if this could work out! Thank you! Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SC2Player Posted March 20, 2017 Report Share Posted March 20, 2017 Seeing that you're not doing an experiment, this would be more related to theoretical physics, which is more math-based than anything else. I'm not too sure if this would fall completely underneath physics as a result. You may also need to consider the motion of the moon in itself too, and what angle the asteroid is coming in at. For example, a head-on collision opposite to the direction of the moon would have different impacts compared to a head-on collision in the same direction of the moon. As for your research question, I think it's sufficiently focused, although I'd work on the wording a bit (maybe mention that you're looking for minimum mass and velocity to be more specific). I don't think that a consequences section is truly necessary - it sort of detracts from your RQ, and remember highly focused EEs are generally the best. 1 Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomas Angelini Posted March 20, 2017 Author Report Share Posted March 20, 2017 Thank you for your reply @SC2Player! I appreciate it. I will check with my supervisor to make sure it falls under Physics and not Math, and I'll make some adjustments to the research question so that it's clearer. I thought the Consequences Section would help to make my EE have a little more personal insight, but as you said it might take away a lot of word count without adding to the answer to my question. Do you think it could take away points to have merely an investigation with an answer and that's it? (Like no implications or effects?) Thanks again! Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SC2Player Posted March 20, 2017 Report Share Posted March 20, 2017 It may help somewhat, but you may want to state it near the end. Check with your supervisor on this. Glad to be able to help. 1 Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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