Astronomy Quiz 6: Galileo and Newton

Galileo

Best known for introducing the telescope to astronomy and pioneering experimental physics

Galileo

Attended the University of Pisa

Galileo

Spent most of his life as a professor at the University of Padua and then as mathematician to the Grand Duke of Tuscany in Florence

Galileo

Bears more responsibility for the birth of modern science than any other individual

Galileo

Tried for heresy by the inquisition in 1633 due to his public defense of heliocentrism. The Catholic Church acquitted him in 1992, only 350 years after his death

Galileo

Experiment from the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Showed that heavier objects do not fall faster than lighter ones. Dropped two balls of different weights from the tower —> they reached the ground at the same time.

No

Does acceleration due to gravity depend on mass

Apollo 15 astronaut David Scott

Performed a version of Galileo’s experiment on the moon in August 1971

Galileo

Studied the way objects accelerate as they fall toward Earth

acted on by an outside force

Objects accelerate uniformly unless…

Galileo

First to correctly define the law of Inertia (an object at rest/motion stays at rest/motion)

Galileo

Correctly argued why we don’t feel Earth’s motion around the Sun: we are moving with it, and to us it appears that we are at rest

Galileo

Understood that friction is a force that works against motion and air resistance was a kind of friction

Hans Lippershey

Invented the telescope in the Netherlands in 1608

Galileo

Built his own telescope with a greatly improved design reaching a magnification power of ~20 at the beginning of 1610

Galileo

Made systematic observation of heavenly bodies in late 1609. Led to the string of discoveries published in Sidereus Nuncius

Jupiter

Appeared as a bright disk with four small stars around it

Stars

What appeared to orbit around Jupiter and showed that there is no single ‘center’ to the Universe

Moons of Jupiter (lo, Europa, Ganymede, Castillo)

Now known as the ‘Galilean satellites’

Christiann Huygens

Figured out that Saturn has a ring in 1655

James Keeler at the Allegheny Observatory in 1895

The theory that Saturn’s rings are not solid was proposed by James Clerk Maxwell in 1859 and verified by…

Ptolemaic System

Viewed with a telescope, Venus showed phases exactly as predicted in the Copernican system, hence falsifying the…

Galileo

Viewed the moon with a telescope revealing mountains, valleys, and craters

Sunspots

The dark ‘spots’ that the Sun showed that appeared, disappeared, and changed shape

Galileo

Monitored the movement of the sunspots over time and discovered that the sun rotates on an axis, just like the Earth, and its rotation period is roughly a month

Galileo

Correctly identified the diffuse emission known as the Milky Way as a large collection of countless faint stars

Galileo

His observations revealed a Universe far from the Aristotelian concept of immutable perfection

Sidereus Nuncius

Publication of it was a watershed moment in the history of astronomy

Galileo

Vocal defender of the Copernican system. He took St. Augustine’s view that Scripture should not be interpreted literally, and minimized the contradiction with the Bible

Galileo

In 1616, he was informed that the church considered heliocentrism ‘false’ and ‘altogether contrary to holy scripture’, and prohibited him from ‘defending or holding’ these ideas.

Galileog

In 1631, published a book in Italian called Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems in which he laid out the evidence in support of heliocentrism

Galileo’s Dialogo

A debate between three friends - an avowed followed of Ptolemy and Aristotle, a convinced Copernican, and an intermediary who guided the debate. They discuss cosmology and astronomy. Naturally, the Copernican gets the better of the arguments

Many central and northern European countries had embraced Protestantism and broken away from the Church.

The Church had wholly embraced the Aristotelian view of the Universe, including geocentrism and the perfection of the heavens.

Why was Galileo’s work seen as such a threat by the Catholic Church?

Galileo

Spent his last years under house arrest

Ptolemaic

After Galileo’s death, this system became untenable, although many scholars were still concerned about the lack of parallax and the motion of the Earth

Kepler

His laws are just empirical rules - they explain how the planets move, but they don’t explain why. He speculated that some kind of force in the Sun was responsible for his laws

Empiricism

The theory that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience

Isaac Newton

English physicist and mathematician who was widely regarded as the most influential scientist of all time

Newton

Inventor as a child. Most of his work was not related to science. He wrote extensively on about alchemy, theology, and chronology of the Bible

Newton

Attended Trinity College at the University of Cambridge as a sizar

Newton

Introduced calculus and discovered several mathematical theorems

Newton

Developed a theory of the nature of light and invented the first reflecting telescope (to eliminate distortion in refractive telescopes - chromatic aberration)

Newton

Developed the laws of motion and the Universal Theory of Gravitation which he presented in Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica

Newton

Laid the Foundations of classical mechanics, discovered the universal law of gravitation, and made breakthroughs in optics

Newton

In 1669, he was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics

The Law of Inertia: An object at rest/in motion stays at rest/in motion in the same direction unless acted upon by an external force

Newton’s First Law of Motion states…

The net force applied to an object is proportional to the acceleration it produces (F=ma)

Newton’s Second Law of Motion states…

For every action force there is an equal and opposite reaction force

Newton’s Third Law of Motion states…

True

T/F: The gravitation force on the earth due to the sun is the same as the gravitational force on the sun due to the Earth.

Gravity

What is the term for a force between objects due to their masses

Galileo

Who realized that all bodies fall to the ground with an idential acceleration

Newton

Who deduced the fundamental laws of motion, including F=ma

True

T/F: Gravitational force must be proportional to the mass of the falling body

Newton

Who deduced that if there must be an equal and opposite force, then the force due to gravity between each pair of objects must be proportional to the product of the masses of the two objects

The force of gravity between two objects acts along the line connecting the two objects

Newton’s Universal Law of Gravitation states that…

the product of the masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance

The magnitude of the force of gravity between any two masses is directly proportional to…

The same force acts on the objects on Earth and on the planets and moons in the Solar System

What was concluded from Newton’s apple moment

Newton

Introduced the concept of orbits

True

T/F: For large enough velocities, it is possible to escape the gravitational field

More

At larger velocities, do the orbits become more or less elliptical?

The fact that both astronaut and station are in the same orbit

Where does an astronaut’s “weightlessness” come from?

ellipses

Newton’s Universal Law of Gravitation naturally leads to orbits being…

L = mvr

Kepler’s second law is just the conservation of angular momentum. Formula?

Third Law of planetary motion

Newton’s Universal Law of Gravitation leads to Kepler’s…

Orbits can be used to weigh celestial objects

Newton explains why the constant of proportionality is different for different systems, aka…

Newton’s

Whose laws explained all motion

A grand clockwork-like mechanism, exact and precise, governed by mathematical laws

What was Newton’s mechanistic view of the Universe