M18 - 2

Question 1

What was Copernicus’s most significant discovery?

Why was it different to what scholars believed at the time?

Answer 1

• The discovery was that the sun was at the centre of the solar system and that the Earth revolved around the Sun.
• Until that point, scholars thought that the earth was at the centre of the universe and that the stars and sun revolved around the earth.

Question 2

What did Galileo observe in 1610?

Answer 2

• Galileo observed that the planer Jupiter had at least 4 moons.

Question 3

What did Galileo observe on the earth’s moon?

Answer 3

• Galileo observed that the moon was not a perfectly round ball, but that it had mountains and valleys on its surface.

Question 4

What did Johannes Kepler discover in 1609?

Answer 4

• Kepler used mathematics and geometry to prove that the planets orbited the sun in an elliptical path, rather than a perfect circle.

Question 5

How did Newton’s discoveries in 1687 improve on Kepler’s discovery?

Answer 5

• Kepler did not know how the planets were held in orbit around the sun.
• Newton suggested that it was the gravitational pull of the sun that held all the planets in their orbits in the solar system.

Question 6

Mention 3 discoveries made by William Herschel and Caroline Herschel.

Answer 6

1. They discovered the planet Uranus.
2. William Herschel built very advanced telescopes that allowed them to see further into the universe.
3. They showed that the solar system was part of the Milky Way.