Senior Physics Unit 3, gravity and motion, with the NSW, Queensland and Victorian courses that cover the same ideas.
Curriculum links last reviewed November 2026.
Orbit details for thousands of satellites: height, period and inclination.
test Kepler's third law on real satellites, and use it to find the mass of the Earth.
Use the worksheet's five satellites, from the space station out to geostationary orbit. Plot T2 against r3: is it a straight line through the origin? Use the slope and Newton's law of gravitation to find the Earth's mass.
Low, medium, geostationary and polar orbits, and what each one is used for.
use Newton's law of universal gravitation to find the height of a geostationary orbit.
Compare the orbits on the page. A geostationary satellite goes round once every 23 hours 56 minutes, so it stays over one spot. Set gravity equal to the centripetal force and solve for the orbital radius. Check your answer with the worksheet and a real TV satellite.
Where the ISS is right now, and how fast it is going.
analyse the space station's orbit as uniform circular motion, and check its period against Kepler's third law.
Read the station's live height and speed. Work out its orbital radius, period and centripetal acceleration. Does the acceleration match g at that height from Newton's law of gravitation? The worksheet sets it out step by step.
Where the tracked junk in orbit is, and how crowded each height has become.
explain how orbital speed makes even small pieces of debris dangerous, and how crowded orbits raise the risk.
Show the map's busiest heights. Estimate the kinetic energy of a 0.5 g fleck of paint hitting a satellite at 10 km/s, then compare it with a 1 kg mass dropped from 10 m. What can satellite operators do to cut the risk?
The telescopes working in space, from Hubble to JWST, and what each one is for.
explain how the light telescopes collect tells us about stars' temperatures and elements, and gives evidence for the big bang.
Pick a telescope from the list that measures spectra. Each element leaves its own pattern of lines in a star's spectrum. Sketch the hydrogen lines, then shift them towards the red: what does that tell us about a distant galaxy?
These are our suggestions for where each tool fits. Always preview a page before using it with a class: some tools show ads, these school pages do not.
Australian Curriculum codes are content descriptions, for example AC9S7U03. NSW syllabus outcomes are a second tag, for example SC4-OTU-01. Victoria and Western Australia have their own codes: the activities still fit.
© Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) 2010 to present, unless otherwise indicated. This material was downloaded from the Australian Curriculum website (Website) (accessed 4 November 2026) and was modified. The material is licensed under CC BY 4.0 Attribution 4.0 International Deed. Version updates are tracked in the ‘Curriculum version history’ section on the 'About the Australian Curriculum' page of the Australian Curriculum website. ACARA does not endorse any product that uses the Australian Curriculum or make any representations as to the quality of such products. Any product that uses material published on this website should not be taken to be affiliated with ACARA or have the sponsorship or approval of ACARA. It is up to each person to make their own assessment of the product, taking into account matters including, but not limited to, the version number and the degree to which the materials align with the content descriptions and achievement standards (where relevant). Where there is a claim of alignment, it is important to check that the materials align with the content descriptions and achievement standards (endorsed by all education Ministers), not the elaborations (examples provided by ACARA).
NSW syllabus outcome codes © NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) for and on behalf of the Crown in right of the State of New South Wales. The cards use the codes only, with our own descriptions.
Know a better fit for your class, or a topic we have missed? Tell us and we will add it.
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Orbital Radar. (2026, November 4). Years 11 and 12: Gravity and Orbits. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://orbitalradar.com/schools/au/years-11-12
“Years 11 and 12: Gravity and Orbits.” Orbital Radar, 4 Nov. 2026, orbitalradar.com/schools/au/years-11-12. Accessed 5 Nov. 2026.
Orbital Radar (2026) Years 11 and 12: Gravity and Orbits. Available at: https://orbitalradar.com/schools/au/years-11-12 (Accessed: 5 November 2026).
Orbital Radar. “Years 11 and 12: Gravity and Orbits.” Last modified November 4, 2026. https://orbitalradar.com/schools/au/years-11-12.
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author = {{Orbital Radar}},
title = {Years 11 and 12: Gravity and Orbits},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
howpublished = {\url{https://orbitalradar.com/schools/au/years-11-12}},
url = {https://orbitalradar.com/schools/au/years-11-12},
urldate = {2026-11-05},
note = {Accessed 2026-11-05}
}TY - ELEC AU - Orbital Radar, TI - Years 11 and 12: Gravity and Orbits PY - 2026 DA - 2026/11/04 PB - Orbital Radar UR - https://orbitalradar.com/schools/au/years-11-12 Y2 - 2026/11/05 LA - en-AU ER -
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