Why planets revolve around the sun in an elliptical path?
There are a few common ways of understanding orbits. As the object moves sideways, it falls toward the orbited object. However it moves so quickly that the curvature of the orbited object will fall away beneath it. A force, such as gravity, pulls the object into a curved path as it attempts to fly off in a straight line. As the object falls, it moves sideways fast enough (has enough tangential velocity) to miss the orbited object. This understanding is particularly useful for mathematical analysis, because the object’s motion can be described as the sum of the three one-dimensional coordinates oscillating around a gravitational center.
