Kepler's laws of planetary motion explaining how the planets' speeds varied, and using elliptical orbits rather than circular orbits with epicycles. Isaac Newton showed in 1687 that relationships like Kepler's would apply in the Solar System to a good approximation, as a consequence of his own laws of motion and law of universal gravitation. Kepler's laws improved the model of Copernicus. If the eccentricities of the planetary orbits are taken as zero, then Kepler basically agreed with Copernicus: The eccentricities of the orbits of those planets known to Copernicus and Kepler are small, so the foregoing rules give fair approximations of planetary motion, but Kepler's
Projectile motion Projectile motion Projectile motion is a form of motion experienced by an object or particle (a projectile) that is thrown near the Earth's surface and moves along a curved path under the action of gravity only (in particular, the effects of air resistance are assumed to be negligible). This curved path was shown by Galileo to be a parabola. The study of such motions is called ballistics, and such a trajectory is a "ballistic trajectory". The only force of significance that acts on the object is gravity, which acts downward, thus imparting to the object a downward acceleration. Because of