ISSN.

0972 - 8406
The NEHU Journal, Vol XV, No. 2, July-December 2017, pp.127-133

Kepler’s Third Law, Dimensional Analysis and

More

ANINDYA KUMAR BISWAS*

Abstract
Kepler’s third law states “The square of the period of a planet is
proportional to the cube of its mean distance from the sun”. Isaac
Newton was the first person to derive this law using calculus, his
laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation. We derive the
Kepler’s third law using dimensional analysis and plausibility
arguments. Moreover, in the same way, we deduce the time period of
closed orbits due to attractive linear forces.
Keywords: Kepler’s third law, Newton’s law of gravitation, Hooke’s
law,Dimensional analysis, Coulomb’s law
A Historical Introduction

A
ristotle (384-322 BC), pioneered occidental astronomy by constructing
immovable celestial model of Universe. Claudius Ptolemy (2nd century
AD) developed geometric model of geocentric universe. Taken
together, these two models assume that planets, moons, sun are moving around
earth; circular motion is the basic form of motion; beyond moon each and
everything is unchanging. Contrasting heliocentric model of the universe was
put forward much later by Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543 AD). With
invention of better and better instruments, in 1500-1600 AD, varieties of
models emerge within the extremes of geocentric and heliocentric viewpoints.
One such model, theTychonic system (Brahe T. 1588), proposed that all
planets excepting earth are revolving about sun, but sun in turn is rotating in
circle about earth.
Tycho Brahe challenged the unchanging celestial, Aristotelian,
perception by taking recourse to meticulous observation of the sky, night
___________________________________________________________________________
*Anindya Kumar Biswas ([email protected]) is a member of the Department of Physics,
NEHU.
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after night, through year after year. He discovered supernova SN15721(Brahe

1573) ripping through the conception of unchanging cosmos. Brahe, a Danish
nobleman (wiki/Tycho_Brahe), devoted his career to science, was a naked
eye astronomer, built a self-sufficient astronomy researchinstitute (West 2001)
in the island of Hven in Øresund, did research in herbal medicine, published
research papers based on celestial observations having been printed in his
printing press, corresponded with his peers in and around Europe. He strived
for accuracy of the order of minute of arc2. His data on Martian orbit were
accurate upto two minutes of arc. He left Hven towards the end of sixteenth
century, developed observatory at Prague. There in the year 1600, Kepler
joined him as an assistant. He died almost accidentally, on 24th October,
1601, leaving the onus of publication of Martian Datato Johannes Kepler.
Before death Tycho catalogued position of 1000 stars and also left behind an
epitaph for himself, ‘’He lived like a sage and died like a fool’’.
Kepler was a German and an avid Copernican (wiki/
Johannes_Kepler). The data collected by T. Brahe had its fruition in the
hand of the mathematician Kepler. On fitting Tycho’s all data to orbit, keeping
the sun almost at the center, Kepler found that the Martian orbit is elliptical
with the sun in one focus. All data excepting one were falling nicely on a
circle. The exceptional data was at eight minutes of arc deviation from
prevailing circular expectation. Kepler went ahead to generalize and put
forward two laws in 1609 (Kepler 1609) and the third law in1619 (Kepler
1619). The trend-setting three laws are as follows:
First law: The orbit of each planet is an ellipse, with the sun at one of
its foci.
Second law: The line joining the planet to the sun sweeps out equal
areas in equal times.
Third law: The square of the period of a planet is proportional to the
cube of its mean distance from the sun.
Kepler’s three laws were descriptive not explanatory. One day in
1685 (Bate etal 1971), Edmund Halley, well known through Halley’s Comet,
with two of his contemporaries Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke, was
toying with possible reasons for planetary motions. They speculated that a
force like magnetism, falling off inversely with square of distance might not
be behind the elliptical shape. Hooke volunteered to come with a proof but
could not come up with one. Many months later, Halley was visiting Isaac
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Newton at Cambridge. He casually posed a question to Newton, ‘If the sun

pulled the planets with a force inversely proportional to the square of their
distances, in what paths ought they to go?’’ Newton replied instantly, ‘’Why,
in ellipse, of course...’’. He was referring to his work, done twenty years
earlier. In 1666, during a long break at Cambridge due to plague outbreak,
Newton, then twenty-three years old, conceived the laws of motion, the law
of gravitation, and developed differential calculus. Moreover, he derived three
laws of Kepler. Newton went ahead with the assumption of inverse square
law force between two bodies, coupled with his laws of mechanics, to
vindicate and supply the correct proportionality constant in Kepler’s third
law. At the advice of Halley, he wrote and published his work in 1687(Newton
1687), “The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy’’ or, simply
‘’Principia’’. The three laws of motion as enunciated in Principia are as
follows:
First law: Everybody continues in its state of rest or of uniform motion
in a straight line unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed
upon it.
Second law: The rate of change of momentum is proportional to the
force impressed and is in the same direction as that force.
Third law: To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.
Expressed mathematically, the second law appears as F=ma where, F
is force impressed, m is mass and a is the produced acceleration respectively.
Acceleration is change in velocity in unit time interval. Velocity is change in
position in unit time interval.
Besides the three laws of motion in Principia, Newton described the
law of universal gravitation which states as follows:
Any two bodies attract one another with a force proportional to the
product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance
between them. Expressed mathematically the law of gravitation reads as
F= = .

The derivation of the third law of Kepler by Newton goes as follows

(Chandrasekhar 1995): derive equation of ellipse under the gravitational force
law, find the rate of temporal change of area vector, then integrate and put
the area of ellipse equal to ab where, a and b are semi-major and semi-
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minor axes of the ellipse respectively. One deduces = where, µ

is reduced mass3 and T is orbital time period.
Orbit Due to Force Law of Hooke
Robert Hooke proposed the linear force law, which is the rule in case
of a spring or, for elastic material, for small elongation. As in inverse square
law force of attraction, for linear force also we get stable non-circular closed
orbits, (Bertrand 1873, Goldstein 2002). Again following the steps as outlined
in the previous paragraph, one arrives at for the closed orbits due to linear
attractive force,

1= .

Academic investigations on various fronts surrounding Kepler’s third

law went for centuries. It is going on unabated till today. We may get a
feeling of recent researches, by looking into, (Dmitrasinovic etal 2015)for
Kepler’s third law for three body orbits, (Gorringeetal 1993) for elliptic orbits
in presence of drag force, (Laskin 2013) for Kepler’s third law in the context
of deformed Newtonian Mechanics.
Can we avoid calculus and derive Kepler’s third law in another way?
If so, does the procedure work for another intervening force law, say, linear
force law of Robert Hooke? We elaborate on one such heuristic approach
as follows, after spending few lines here on dimensional analysis.
Mass, time and length are considered as fundamental quantities and
rest other are considered as derived from these three. As a result, dimension
of a derived quantity can be expressed as some power law function of
dimensions of mass[M], time[T] and length[L]. Any equation in physics has
to be dimensionally consistent i.e. both sides of an equation have to have the
same dimension. From knowledge of dimension of one side knowing the
dimension of other side is the essence of dimensional analysis. For details,
see references (Halliday 2003,Bohren 2004). Apart from elementary aspect,
dimensional analysis plays important role in advanced areas of physics like
mechanical similarity in mechanics (Landau L. D.), renormalization group
analysis (Goldenfeld N. 2005) etc.
Kepler’ Third Law

Newton’s law of gravitation is F= = magnitudewise.

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Simple dimensional analysis of the law of gravitation suggests, (Halliday

2003, Bohren 2004, Mungan 2009),

[M][L] =[k] implying where, F = ma and

[a]=[L].
Now, for two body problem, in the C.O.M frame, relevant mass is the
reduced mass, µ; relevant length is semi-major axis length, a; relevant
time is orbital time period, T, respectively. Hence,. What is the
proportionality constant?
For closed orbit, it’s two-dimensional motion i.e. one slice of
spherical angle, , which ranges from 0 to Hence, the
proportionality factor is multiplied by something else. To find
that something else, we compare with electrostatic force rule in
S.I. unit(Griffiths 1999, Jackson1996,Spavieri 2004), F= .
In physical relationship what appears not 4 say, in the
Clausius-Mossotti formula.In physical relationship we divide 4 πε0
by 4π.
Analogue of in the case of Newton’s law of gravitation is G, universal
constant of gravitation. Hence, in the physical relation,
say, in the relation between semi-major axis length and time period,
we should divide G by . Hence is that something else. Therefore,
=
which is Kepler’s third law, (Goldstein 2002).
Another way, we can deduce the The first mass is using one point out of
4 solid angle through which gravitational field lines are emanating from
the second mass, at any point of time. Hence, effective coupling istimes
that of k.
Again, for Hooke’s law,(Sommerfeld2003),F=kr, magnitude wise.
Simple dimensional analysis suggests
[M][L]=[k][L]implying 1=.
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Now, for two body problem, in the C.O.M frame, relevant mass is the
reduced mass, µ and relevant time is orbital time period, T. Hence,
1What is the proportionality constant?
Plausibility arguments along the same line as in the previous section
suggests that the proportionality constant is .
Hence,1=.
This is the relation exhibiting length-scale independence of time-period
of two body orbiting under mutual attractive force of Hooke’s law type.
Conclusion
We provide heuristic dimensional arguments for time periods, for closed orbits,
in case of inverse square law and linear forces for two body motion, using
few steps. The expressions are Kepler’s third law and its analogue for
harmonic oscillator potential. It will be interesting if arguments espoused
here to fix the pre factor, can be used in other cases, say in three body
problem.
This work may be useful for classroom teaching.
Acknowledgement
The author would like to thank M.Sc. physics students of NEHU for listening
to the subject of the paper, from the author.
Notes
1 SN1572 is 7500 light-years away from earth.
2 For example, instrument for measurement of angle of one degree between
two inclined planes costs Rs. 700, whereas instrument for measurement of
angle of one minute between two inclined planes costs around Rs.30000.
Precision comes at the cost of rise of price. Sometimes, one order of increase
of accuracy costs one order of price rise.
3 Reduced mass = .

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