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Introduction
This paper had its genesis in a conversation I had with Wayne Rossman in 1996. He
mentioned that my thesis advisor, Don Chakerian of the University of California at
Davis, had once told him that the path the moon makes about the sun is convex. My
first thought upon hearing this was that it couldn't possibly be true, for in my mind I
pictured this path as looking something like the curve in Figure 1. When I met with
Dr. Chakerian soon after, I asked him about this problem. He responded that he had
never mentioned it to Wayne; in fact he had never heard of this result, and moreover
he didn't believe it. He felt that since the path of the moon would at times be inside
Earth's orbit, and at other times outside the orbit, it could not be convex. I pointed
out that one could draw a convex hexagon and a circle in such a way that part of the
hexagon was interior to the circle, and part was exterior. This made Dr. Chakerian less
skeptical, and we set out to see if we could prove the assertion.
A Lunar Model
We decided to model the simplest idealized case, with a point moon moving with
constant speed in a circular orbit centered at a point planet, which in turn revolves
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with constant speed around a circular orbit centered at a point sun. This allows the
following representation.
Take the distance from the moon to the planet to be 1, the distance from the planet to
the sun to be d, and let p be the number of times the moon revolves around the planet
as the planet orbits once around the sun. Then, relative to an appropriate coordinate
system centered at the sun, our assumption is that the path of the moon is given by the
parametric equations
for 0 > 0. Here d and p need not be integers, but could be any real numbers satisfying
d > 1 and p > 0. With this parameterization, the sun, the moon, and the planet are
collinear when 0=0, and both the planet and the moon revolve in counterclockwise
directions around their respective circles.
This model has a Ptolemaic flavor, since a curve with these parametric equations is
a generalized epicycloid. It can be viewed as the locus of a point fixed at unit distance
from the center of a circle of radius - rolling around the outside of a circle of radius
d(p-l)
P
x'y" - y'x"
K =
(xf2 + y,2)i'
VOL. 32, NO. 4, SEPTEMBER 2001 THE COLLEGE MATHEMATICS JOURNAL 269
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Since ? 1 < cos(p ? 1)0 < 1 for all 0, the sign will not change if either
or
Therefore the cross product vector will not change orientation if (d ? p)(d ~ 1) > 0
or if (d + p)(d + 1) < 0. The second inequality is impossible since d is positive and
p is nonnegative. Since d > 1, for the first inequality we must have d > p.
When 0 = -^y, d2 + p + d(p + 1) cos(p - 1)0 = d2 + p - d(p + 1), and when
d < p the right hand side of this equality is negative. When 0 = 2(7r_1), d2 + p +
d(p + 1) cos(p ? 1)0 = d2 + p, and the right hand side of this equality is always
positive when d is positive and p is nonnegative. Thus the cross product vector changes
orientation when d < p, and the path of the moon has loops in this case.
What about when d = pl The denominator of the curvature expression is
(xa + y'2) 5 = (d2 + 2dp sin 0 sin pO + p2 + 2dp cos 0 cos pO) \.
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Figure 3. Convex lunar paths
VOL. 32, NO. 4, SEPTEMBER 2001 THE COLLEGE MATHEMATICS JOURNAL 271
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Figure 4. Non-convex lunar paths
Finally the question that motivated us, what about the path our moon makes around
our sun? The distance from the sun to the earth is roughly 389.2 times the distance
from the earth to the moon (this calculation is based on the lengths of the semimajor
axes of the orbits of the earth and the moon). As the earth revolves once around the
sun, the moon revolves approximately 13.4 times around the earth [1]. Therefore for
this case, we have d = 389.2 and p = 13.4, so we are safely in the d > p2 range. Even
though the orbits concerned here are elliptical, they are close enough to being circular
to conclude that the path of our moon around the sun is (locally) convex.
Other behaviors occur in our solar system. In our model, the path followed by the
moon Callisto of the planet Jupiter has no loops but is not locally convex (d = 727.5,
p = 259.6), while the moon Io of the same planet does have loops in its path (d =
1846.2, p = 2448.8) [1].
Conclusion
It would appear that the path our moon makes around the sun is locally convex. This
is a result that many people, mathematicians included, at first find counter-intuitive.
While the path of our moon is locally convex in our model, starting at any initial
position it takes about 19 years to return fairly close to that position. The unu
situation where the sun, the moon, and the earth are nearly collinear, while at the sam
time a full moon occurs at the winter solstice with the moon at perigee, takes p
every 7*19 = 133 years. This happened on December 21, 1866 when the Lakota
Sioux, taking advantage of the exceptionally bright moon, ambushed the U.S. Ar
in Wyoming. The next occurrence of this celestial phenomenon was on December 21,
1999.
Reference
1. Bertotti, B. and Farinella, P. Physics ofthe Earth and the Solar System. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dor-
drecht, 1990.
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