Download Physics in the Renaissance Mark van den Bosch Index

Physics
in the
Renaissance
Mark van den Bosch
Index............................
 How did the Renaissance begin?
page. 2





page.
page.
page.
page.
page.
Nicolaus Copernicus
Johannes Kepler
Tycho Brahe
Galileo Galilei
Leonardo da Vinci
3
3
4
4
5
 Epilogue
page. 6
 Source material
page. 7
1
Physics in the Renaissance
How did the Renaissance begin?
R
enaissance means the re-birth of classical Greece and Rome. It’s the re-discovery of the
old Greek and roman texts and ideas. The physics in the renaissance is nothing else than the
ancient work of classical Greece and from the Greek Philosophers, however in the renaissance
the thoughts and ideas are improved, like now. The ancient ideas came back in the middle ages.
These ideas were of the Greek Philosophers, like the thoughts of the lover of thinking
‘’Aristotle’’. He was a thinker and thought about the natural and unnatural motion. Natural
motion is actually bodies moving naturally would move either up or down, basically attributed to
the natural elements. A result of this motion is water, earth, smoke + fire, air in the body.
Because these are in the body it returns to the earth, instead of flying away. Unnatural motion
is horizontal motion. It will move, except a force will stop it. After this period began the
Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages, the church had full power over Europe. The Church was always
right and had much propaganda. If you were right than you had the right authority, e.g. the bible
and other Theology. Until the time of Copernicus, the thoughts and ideas came into use, (The rebirth of classical Greece and Rome ‘The Renaissance’ began.) In the Time of the Renaissance
Science and Physics were very important. People developed the ideas and thoughts, like; Nicolaus
Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Tygho Brahe and Galileo Galilei and the famous Leonardo da Vinci.
2
Nicolaus Copernicus
N
icolaus Copernicus was born February 19, 1473, in Thorn (Toruń) in
Royal Prussia, part of the Kingdom of Poland. At the end of 1542 he had
apoplexy and paralysis. Copernicus died on 24 May 1543. Copernicus was
mathematician, astronomer, physician, quadrilingual polyglot, classical
scholar,
translator,
artist,
Catholic cleric,
jurist,
governor,
military leader, diplomat and economist. He spoke 5 languages; Latin,
German, Italian, Greek and Polish.
Nicolaus
Copernicus worked his whole live on a book: The
revolutionibus orbium coelestium. This book is about Copernicus
theories and ideas about the revolution of forces and heavily
bodies. His book was published just before his death, due to the
church. Copernicus was the first person who developed the
heliocentric theory: The sun in the centre. His theory was
against the church, because they thought the earth was the
centre. Copernicus came up with an easier way of calculation too.
Johannes Kepler
J
ohannes Kepler was born December 27, 1571 in Weil der Stadt near
Stuttgart in Germany. Kepler was a son of a prostitute and a mercenary.
He died November 15, 1630. Johannes Kepler’s theories weren’t against
Copernicus and accepted his idea (sun in the centre and the rest around
it.) Johannes Kepler was mathematician, astronomer and astrologer. Johannes
Kepler evented 3 new ideas.
1st idea: Kepler thought out that little loops weren’t
a piece of cycles or epicycles, but little loops were a
product of ellipses. An ellipse is a kind of circle
only than made by two foci, meaning that the circle can
be made by two points/pins with a piece of string.
2nd idea: Johannes Kepler found out that: The closer to
the foci (e.g. Sun) how faster you move. The red
surface is the same as the blue surface. The red
surface is close to the sun (Perihelion) and the blue
surface is far away of the sun (Aphelion). Due to the
radius of the red surface is smaller the distance is
bigger than as the distance of the blue surface.
3
3rd idea: His third discovery is about the years in the universe. A year actually means the time
it takes getting around the centre/sun. He discovered that the closer to the sun, the shorter the
year is and he knew how to calculate it: Year2 - Radius3 .
Tycho Brahe
T
ycho Brahe was born December 14, 1546
till October 24, 1601. He was a Danish
nobleman and studied astronomical and
he’s an alchemist. Tycho Brahe was
religious so he thought about an idea that
confirms the thought of Copernicus and the
Church (to keep them happy). He worked
together with Johannes Kepler, because the
needed each other to complete their
discoveries. One of Johannes
Kepler’s good work was the scientific star
Catalogue and planetary using Tycho Brahe’s
help and measurement.
Galileo Galilei
A
nother person who lived in the time period of Johannes Kepler was
Galileo Galilei. Galileo Galilei was born February 15, 1564 till
January 8, 1642. He was an Italian physicist, mathematician,
astronomer and philosopher who played an important role in the scientific
revolution. He was one of the philosophers who thought against the Greek
motion. His explanation was that all motions are FORCED. The special thing
on Galileo Galilei was that he not just wrote a book or just wrote it
down, but he demonstrated it.
The standard situation should be; an object will not move unless it’s influenced by a force, if
so it will continue in a straight line with the same velocity. In other words: it will move the
whole time. (The 1st Law: Standard law)
Galileo made a few experiments with this
situation. One of his experiments that he
demonstrated was the ball rolling down a
trajectory ‘’a curve’’. The ball always
will stop at the same height where it began,
no matter if you’re changing the curve, it
always want to continue.
4
About the vertical motion. The motion of falling objects is the simplest and most
common example of motion with changing velocity. Galileo was the first person who
discovered. Galileo dropped a cannonball and a musket ball simultaneously from a
tower, and observed that they hit the ground at nearly the same time. This
contradicted Aristotle's long-accepted, by every scientist and average people idea,
that heavier objects fell faster, what’s by Galileo proven that it’s not true. But
another experiment is proven that if you use a flat piece of paper and a coin
(what’s much heavier) they won’t hit the ground at the same time. Galileo
speculated that in addition to the force that always pulls objects down, there was
an upward force exerted by the air, what means that the velocity was different due
to the force of air. When air can’t move an object upwards the velocity will be the
same as the heavier object.
All the experiments Galileo Galilei did about
motion was observed by a slow motion. When he
wanted to observe the vertical motion he couldn’t
observe because the speed was too fast, so he used
a slower motion. Of course in that time there were
no computers and video camera’s so he had to
change the velocity, due to changing the angle of
the falling object. When he was changing the angle
of the object to observe the velocity of the
different objects he discovered also something
else. He saw and connection between time and
distance, because when the time is twice so long
the distance will be four time so large. S=T2
(e.g. if the time gets 4 times longer = the
distance, 42, 16x bigger)
Leonardo da Vinci
E
arlier in the centuries a famous Italian was born ‘’Leonardo
di ser Piero da Vinci’’. He was born April 15, 1452 – May 2,
1519 in Vinci, Republic of Florence in Italy. Now in the present
day it’s called Province of Florence, Italy.
He’s worldwide known as a painter (painting:
Mona Lisa), though he was also architect,
musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer,
inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer,
botanist and writer: summarized a polymath.
Leonardo da Vinci was master in math and Latin
and studied for a long time
anatomy. His observations were
really dangerous, because he used
human bodies (mostly guards of the
church) for his knowledge and his
study of anatomy about the human
body. He invented machines, which
are developed through centuries till now, like the flying
machine or the tank. He improved the telescope of Galileo
Galilei too, e.g. the glass.
5
He went through whole Europe for materials and ideas to make paintings or
blueprints for machines and weapons. He was against the church, though he was
religious and painted stories from the bible (probably to keep the church
happy). Leonardo the inventor, invented machines, weapons, easier ways for
math; science, measurements etc. Due to his experiments from the human body he
knew much more than all the other people in that age. Leonardo was so
important in the Renaissance, due to his research about anatomy: Human Body.
Epilogue
A
fter all, without the Greek philosophers, Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Tycho
Brahe, Galileo Galilei and Leonardo da Vinci’s developments, discoveries, invents and
ideas there would never have been technology, anatomy, science, physics et cetera. The
church would have been powerful forever and we would have been living in the Stone Age.
6
 Sources:
o Mister. Wyder
o Internet sites (like Wikipedia)
o Information books
 Pictures:
o Made by Myself
o Internet
 Internet sites:
o Google.co.uk/Google.nl
o En.Wikipedia.org
o (Other sites familiar with Google and Wikipedia.)
7