Legendary Scientists Flashcards
When did Copernicus publish his legendary work, what was it called
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) just before his death in 1543
As an aside, what theory did Copernicus derive in 1517 that was do with economics
In 1519 what other maxim did he come up with (the principle rather than the name) - and what is this now known as
Quantity theory of Money
“When a government overvalues one type of money and undervalues another, the undervalued money will leave the country or disappear from circulation into hoards, while the overvalued money will flood into circulation.” It is commonly stated as: “Bad money drives out good”.
‘Gresham’s Law’
Actually, there were versions of this theory knocking around for a long time
What are the internal angles of:
A pentagon
A hexagon
What is the general rule
540 degrees (108 per angle)
720 degrees (120 per angle)
Add 180 degrees per side (essentially because each new shape comes from adding a triangle
so for any polygon (n-2)x180
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
picture from 1636
Born in Pisa
Galileo has been called the “father of modern observational astronomy”, the “father of modern physics”, the “father of science”, and “the father of modern science”.
When did the Church ban Copernicus’s book De Revolutionibus
When did Galileo write his ‘neutral’ book on a discussion between the two theories, which obviously favoured Copernicus, what was it called
(can you name the three advocats in the dialogue) - what did this mean for the pope
1616
1632
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
(which was banned - and he was convicted of heresy)
Sagredo (a witty scholar ) - initially neutral, then pro-Copernican
Simplicio (a ponderous Aristotelian ) - geocentricist
Salviati - Copernican - represents Galileo’s position
The Pope Urban VIII who had encouraged Galileo to write the book had demanded his own arguments be put in the book - they were put in the mouth of Simplicio
What book did Galileo publish in 1610 which first got him into trouble
n 1610, Galileo published his Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger), describing the surprising observations that he had made with the new telescope, namely the phases of Venus and the Galilean moons of Jupiter. With these observations he promoted the heliocentric theory of Nicolaus Copernicus
Do you know for polygons with the following number of sides
10
12
13
20
100
1000
10 - decagon
12 - dodecagon
13 - tridecagon
20 - icosagon
100 - hectogon
1000 - chiliagon
What are the five platonic shapes,
What are platonic shapes (what is the base shape of each)
What ‘element’ did Plato associate them with, and what was the ‘fifth element’
tetrahedron (made from 4 triangles) - fire
octahedron (8 triangles) - air
icosahedron (20 triangles) - water
cube (6 squares) - earth
dodecahedron (12 pentagons) - quintessence
The heavens don’t change, so are made of an eternal ‘fifth’ element - quintessence
Who was Kepler an assistant to, and what did that mean
What was Kepler’s significant weakness (for astronomy at least)
Tycho Brahe (for about a year) (1600-1601) - the next 11 years were the most productive of his life
When Brahe died, he as imperial mathmatician to Emporer Rudolf II gained the fruits of Tycho’s labour, and tasked to complete Tycho’s work
Kepler had bad eyesight
What did Galileo differ from Kepler on (in which Kepler was right)
Galileo did not believe that the moon caused the tides
Unfortunate end?
Giordano Bruno (1548-1600)
A friar, philopher and astrologer, who went beyond the Copernican model
He was burned at the stake in Rome for heresy (although his astronomy was only a minor component in that)
Bruno also wrote extensively on the art of memory, a loosely organized group of mnemonic techniques and principles.
What instrument did Galileo play
The lute
his father Vincenzo was a composer and music theorist
Where did Tycho live as an autocrat
Who were his court favourites
What happened in 1596
On the island of Hven, where he did astronomy for the Danish King
His court in Hven included a jester dwarf and a pet giant elk
In 1596 his patron died, so he went off to work for the HRE Rudolf II in Prague
In what way did Keplar overthrow the Greek thinking
Where did he differ from Copernicus
His work ruled out epicycles - orbits were not perfect circles but elipses
Copernicus has planetary orbits as circles and the speed of the planet as constant, he also had the sun at the centre (technically its a a focal point of an ellipse)
If an orbit is nearly circular then Kepler –> Copernicus
What did Tycho Brahe refute in his 1573 treatise ‘De Nova Stella’ (On the new Star)
What did he show about comets?
the Aristotelian belief in an unchanging celestial realm.
His precise measurements indicated that “new stars,” (stellae novae, now known as supernovae) in particular that of 1572, lacked the parallax expected in sub-lunar phenomena, and were therefore not “atmospheric” tailless comets as previously believed, but were above the atmosphere and moon.
Using similar measurements he showed that comets were also not atmospheric phenomena, as previously thought, and must pass through the supposedly “immutable” celestial spheres
What are Kepler’s three laws of planetary motion
1 - The orbit of a planet is an ellipse with the Sun at one of the two foci. - - found from analysing TB’s work
2 - A line segment joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time - - found from analysing TB’s work
3 - The square of the orbital period of a planet is proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit.
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)
German
Tycho Brahe (1546-1601)
from Denmark (actually from Scania, which was then part of Denmark, but now Sweden)
Famous for his metal prosthetic nose
Two big claims to fame?
Thomas Harriot (1560-1621)
He is sometimes credited with the introduction of the potato to the British Isles (he was also a maths tutor to Walter Raleigh)
Harriot was the first person to make a drawing of the Moon through a telescope, on 26 July 1609, over four months before Galileo
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 - 1543)
Polish
Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695)
Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
