Science

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Many ancient civilizations had sophisticated engineering and mathematical skills, as evidenced by their buildings and cities. Name  the locations of FOUR such ancient civilizations (not including Greece and Rome)

Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China, Mayan, Incan, Aztec, etc.

All the ancient civilizations had explanations for questions about the world. What did these explanations have in common?

They were supernatural.

In which city in Ancient Greece (modern day Turkey), did a new approach to explaining things begin?

Miletus

What charactized these kinds of explanations from qu.3 above

They were naturalistic.

Give an example of a phenomenon, and suggest how it might have been explained by an ancient civilization, and how the philosophers from qu.3 would have explained it.

thunder

The gods were angry, and throwing things around in heaven

Clouds build up static electricity

Who figured out that levers can balance when the torque is balanced?

Archimedes

How do you calculate the torque on a lever?

Mass x distance from the fulcrum

Who figured out a good approximation for the circumference of the Earth?

Eratosthenes

Which Greek scientist figured out whether the King’s crown was pure gold or not?

Archimedes

What does legend say he shouted as he ran down the street?

Eureka! (I have found it!)

Who were three most famous philosophers from 5thC BCE Athens?

SPA(Socrates ,Plato, Aristotle

Explain Aristotle’s theory of matter.

Everything is made up of four elements: Earth, Water, Air, Fire 

Everything is constantly changing and imperfect

Briefly explain Aristotle’s’ cosmology (theory of the heavens)?

Geocentric (Earth centered)

A series of crystalline spheres, nested inside one another, with all the planets, moon, sun and stars attached to them

Everything in space is made from Ether

Everything in space is eternal and perfect

Which civilization took over from the Greeks?

Romans

For approximately how long did its empire last?

1000 years

What were they good at? What were they not so interested in?

Building, fighting and organizing. They were not so interested in theoretical ideas

What were the Dark Ages?  Why might this not be such a good name for them?

The period after the fall of the Roman Empire, when the advances of the Greeks and Romans were gradually lost. It was not ‘dark’ everywhere.

What were the approximate dates of the Dark Ages?

400-1400 CE

What were the dates of the Golden Age of Islam?

750-1250 CE

Give four reasons that science and technology flourished during this period.

Scholarship was encouraged by the religion. 

Scholarship was sponsored by the Government
Paper technology came from China, aiding the spread of knowledge
Large libraries were built throughout the Islamic world

Who wrote the famous ‘Canon of Medicine’ that was the go-to hand book for doctors for 100s of years?

Ibn Sina

What area of mathematics was developed by Islamic scholars, whose name, to this day, has an Arabic root.

Algebra

Where was the House of Wisdom? What was it?

Baghdad. A huge library.

What was the European Renaissance?

The rebirth of classical, humanist learning and culture.

When did the renaissance happen, approximately?

Approx. 1400-1600 CE

Which European astronomer first proposed the sun-centered universe?

Nicolai Copernicus

What is the technical term for this model?

Heliocentric

Who was burned at the stake for proposing this model?

Giordarno Bruno

What crime did the Catholic church say that had Giordarno Bruno committed?

Heresy

What instrument did Galileo improve?

The telescope

When he used it to look at the moon, what did he see? Why did this make him doubt Aristotle?

He saw craters, valleys and mountains. Aristotle had said that everything in space was perfect and unchangeable.

Galileo dropped different sized cannon balls off a tower. What did he demonstrate? Why was it significant?

He demonstrated that all things fall at the same speed, regardless of mass. It was significant because Aristotle had written that things fall with a speed proportional to their mass.