Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Galileo Galilei and his Inventions

Galileo Galilei is known as the father of science. He was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and a philosopher too. He is first who creates an telescope. More than at this moment we are celebrating 400 anniversary of his telescope.

Flash back to Life

Galileo was born in Pisa (now in Italy),on February 15, 1564 as the first one of six children of Vincenzo Galilee.Earlier days of his child hood, Galileo made many scientific toys and played with it.He was very much interested in arts and music.
He had an ambition to become an monk,unfortunately he can't be it.then he studied medical,as the wish of his father ,but unlucky follows him here too.After wards he became good professor at pisa University without a degree.

Observations

According to Aristotelian principles the Moon was above the sub-lunary sphere and in the heavens, hence should be perfect. He found the "surface of the moon to be not smooth, even and perfectly spherical,...,but on the contrary, to be uneven, rough, and crowded with depressions and bulges. And it is like the face of the earth itself, which is marked here and there with chains of mountains and depths of valleys." He calculated the heights of the mountains by measuring the lengths of their shadows and applying geometry.


Moons of Jupiter

Observations of the planet Jupiter over successive night revealed four star-like objects in a line with it. The objects moved from night to night, sometimes disappearing behind or in front of the planet. Galileo correctly inferred that these objects were moons of Jupiter and orbited it just as our Moon orbits Earth. For the first time, objects had been observed orbiting another planet, thus weakening the hold of the Ptolemaic model. Today these four moons are known as the Galilean satellites; Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

The Phases of Venus

Venus was observed to go through a sequence of phases similar to the Moon. This could not be explained in the Ptolemaic model but could be accounted for by either the Sun-centered Copernican model or the Earth-centered Tychonic model that had the other planets orbiting the Sun as it orbited the Earth. Galileo rejected Tycho's model as an unnecessary hybrid and used the discovery to consolidate his support of the Copernican model.

Telescope

Galileo's telescope is today remembered as a revolutionary stargazing tool that changed Earth's standing in the heavens. We are in the age of the space telescopes and beyond. However it all started 400 years back with the famous Mr Galileo's telescope. Galileo Galilei demonstrated his telescope, which lead him to make new astronomical observations.

Galileo Galilei did not invent the telescope but was the first to use it systematically to observe celestial objects and record his discoveries.That honor must be assigned to Johannes Lippershey, an obscure optician of Middleburg, who, on the 2nd of October 2608, petitioned the states-general of the Low Countries for exclusive rights in the manufacture of an instrument for increasing the apparent size of remote objects, Here paying tribute to Galileo and his telescope which sparked off the revolution in astronomy or space research.

Thermometer

The substitution, in 1670, of mercury for water completed the modern thermometer. Galileo seems, at an early period of his life, to have adopted the Copernican theory of the solar system, and was deterred from avowing his opinions - as is proved by his letter to Kepler of August 4, 1597, by the fear of ridicule rather than of persecution. The appearance, in September 1604, of a new star in the constellation Serpentarius afforded him indeed an opportunity, of which he eagerly availed himself, for making an onslaught upon the Aristotelian axiom of the incorruptibility of the heavens; but he continued to conform his public teachings in the main to Ptolemaic principles, until the discovery of a novel and potent implement of research in the shape of the telescope (q.v.) placed at his command startling and hitherto unsuspected evidence as to the constitution and mutual relations of the heavenly bodies.

Activity

1586-Invented the Hydrostatic Balance for weighing items in the air & in water.
1593- Invented the Thermometer, a device used to measure air temperature.
1597- Invented a Compass to help solve math problems.
1609- Created a Telescope & uses it to observe the moon's surface.
1610- Uses a telescope to observe Jupiter, Saturn, the Milky Way, Venus, & other celestial bodies
Discovered Pendulum Theory.
Proved that sun is the centre of Solar system.
He wrote a great scientific book called "The story of messenger"

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