The Scientific Revolution
By: Naomi Chavez-Medina
What was the Scientific Revolution?
Who were the people associated with the change?
Galileo Galilei
Galileo was born in Pisa, Italy, on February 15, 1564. He was interested in studying the effect of forces on the motion of bodies . He also realized that it took the same time of each swing as he observed a chandelier swaying back and forth. This discovery is known as the "Law of the Pendulum". This discovery led to keep track of time. Another thing that he proved was that heavy objects fall at the same rate as the lighter ones. Galileo made improvements to the telescope, which this improvements allowed him to study sunspots, the moon's surface, and Jupiter's moons. He also supported Copernicus's discovery that the earth revolves around the sun. Furthermore, their was a conflict with the Roman Catholic church. They sill taught that the Earth was the center of the universe. In 1633, he was punished by being told he could not leave his house until he died,in January 8, 1642.
Nicolaus Copernicus
Copernicus was born on February 19,1473, in Torun, Poland. Before Copernicus's time, astronomy had been based in Ptolemy's theory that earth was the center of the universe and motionless. Copernicus's revolutionary idea was that the earth should be regarded as one of the planets that revolved around the sun. Also, he stated that the earth rotated. However, still clung to the ideas of the planets traveling in small circular orbits that moved along larger orbits. By this Nicolaus Copernicus said that the geocentric model was wrong and didn't explain the movements of the sun, moon and planets. He proposed a new model for the universe,"The HELIOCENTRIC MODEL". Which consists that the sun is the center of the universe. Nicolaus Copernicus was considered the founder of modern astronomy.
Johannes Kepler
Kepler is best known for his discovery that the orbits in which the earth and the other planets of the solar system travel around the sun are "elliptical, or oval, in shape. He was born on December 27, 1571, at Weil der Staat in the duchy, now in southern Germany. Kepler decided to try explaining the motions of the planets as seen from the earth. However, Kepler proposed three laws of planetary motion based upon his observations:
- The path of every planet in its motion about the sun forms an ellipse, with the sun at one focus.
- The speed of a planet in its orbit varies so that a line joining it with the sun sweeps over equal areas in equal times.
- The squares of the planets' periods of revolutin are proportional to the cubes of the planets' mean distances from the sun.