What is physics? Most people ask themselves this question and don't realize the importance of physics, and how much it influences our daily lives, since the moment in which we wake up until we go to sleep. Physics comes from the Greek, meaning "knowledge of nature", because physics, in a basic definition, studies matter, energy, and the interaction between them by observing, experimenting and analyzing nature. All of these studies are with the purpose of finding physical laws to explain everything, from simple things in our daily lives to the complicated things that happen in the vast universe.
In this article, we are going to talk about the physicist Galileo Galilei and his tremendous contributions to the physics to our understanding of the solar system and the laws of physics. Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa, Italy on February 15, 1564. At a very young age Galileo promised so much mentally as manually, he was seventeen when he enrolled in the University of Pisa, where he specialized in medicine as his father, Vincenzo Galilei, wanted him to do. His studies of the pendulum began when he watched a suspended lamp swing back and forth in the cathedral of Pisa. He used his pulse to time large and small swings. It was then when he made his most distinguished discovery about the pendulum, something nobody had realized. The period, time in which a pendulum swings back and forth, of each swing was exactly the same. It is then when he created the law of pendulum which eventually would help him in the development of his idea of a pendulum clock and the accuracy in its time keeping. As a result of losing interest in his studies, he did not acquire a degree, but left the university with a vast knowledge of Aristotle.
When a debate started because one of Aristotle's laws of nature, heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects, Galileo started doing experiments in which he dropped balls of different sizes and weights from the Tower of Pisa, a building of 54 meters tall. As a result, all of them landed at the base of the building at the same time. He also experimented rolling balls down an inclined plane and then determined their positions after equal time intervals, where he discovered the mathematical expression of the law of falling bodies: the distance increases as the square of the time. After realizing these experiments he proved that Aristotle was wrong, the velocity of free falling objects does not depend on their weight, meaning that objects with same shape and volume, but of different mass, would take the same time to arrive to the floor.
Galileo built his first telescope which was a 3-power telescope. Later he made a 20-power telescope, with which he was able to look at the Moon and demonstrate that the surface of the moon was not crystalline, but instead it was covered in craters; discover the four satellites of Jupiter, showing that not all celestial objects orbit around the Earth; observe a supernova; verify the phases of Venus; and discover sunspots with which he was able to determine the period of the sun's rotation and the direction of its coordinate. His discoveries proved the Copernican system which says that the earth and the other planets orbit around the sun. Galileo's belief in the Copernican System got him into trouble with the Catholic Church, where he was warned by Cardinal Bellarmine, under the order of Pope Paul V, that he could not discuss or defend Copernican theories unless it were a mathematical proposition. When Galileo published his book, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, it was a total hit with the public except for the Church. The Church banned the book and ordered Galileo to appear before the Inquisition in Rome. Galileo was found guilty of heresy because of his book and was sent to his home, where he was to remain under house arrest in his house near Florence. He got old and sick, so he was allowed to move to his house in Florence so he could be closer to his doctors. Until his death in January 8,1642, at the age of 78, he continued to investigate in different areas of science and even published a book on force and motion.
Galileo Galilei, who was a philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician, gave important contributions to the sciences of motion and astronomy. Thanks to his invention of the telescope and his discoveries, many thoughts revolutionized and paved the way for the acceptance of the Copernican System, as we all nowadays know. If it weren't for him who knows if no one would have discovered what he did and we would still believe the wrong theories.
No comments:
Post a Comment