Unit 1 Textbook Flashcards
Science =
A way of systematically describing and often also explaining how and why events happen
Scientific method
Forming an idea of the way something works and then making careful measurements, experiments, or observations to test the hypothesis
Theory
A hypothesis (or set of hypotheses) that has stood the test of time and so far has not been contradicted by evidence
Law
Relationships among things or properties that continue to fit the evidence
What profession did Thales have?
Engineer: it is said that he changed the course of a river so that an army could cross it
What did Thales believe was the primordial substance?
Water
Who synthesized Aristotle’s work with Christianity?
Saint Thomas Aquinas
What reason did Aristotle give as to why an arrow does not fall to the ground once it leaves the bow?
Air rushes around behind the arrow and pushes it forward
What explanation Aristotle give to what we now call gravity?
Earth is the final resting place
Who were the first thinkers to recognize that the earth is a sphere?
Pythagoreans
Who is considered to be the founder of atomic theory?
Democritus
Why did Greek science fail
Because it’s adherents gave it the attributes of revealed religion
During what time period was the great Arabic scientific library transferred into Latin question
1120-1240AD
What did al-Khwarizmi popularize?
Algebra and the use of Indian numbers including the number zero in the Decimal place value system
Who was the first Arab philosopher?
al-Kindi
Also worked on optics, medicine and pharmacology
What famous celestial invention came out of the Muslim world?
The Astrolabe
What is the name of the table of mathematical formula for calculating celestial positions?
Zij
Who developed the first theory of light and vision?
al-Haitham
When was science at its lowest in Europe?
500-1000 AD
Into what realm of study what great thinkers put during the middle ages?
Theology instead of science
What was a characteristic feature of Pliny’s successes?
Plagiarism and incomprehension which generated distortions
Into what three continents was the world divided in the year 1000?
Europe, Asia, and Africa
Name three accomplishments of the middle ages
- Advanced philosophical culture by translating Greek philosophers and Islamic commentators
- Synthesis of Aristotelian and Christian thought
- Creation of schools and universities
Why was Francis Bacon encouraged to detail the scientific method?
Because at his time people put lots of zeal and effort into thinking of problems but were not successful because they did not engage the proper means
When was the scientific revolution
17th century or 1600s
Who were the most famous figures of the Scientific Revolution?
Bacon 🥓 Kepler🐟 Galileo🌠 Descartes🤔 Newton🍎
What doctrines did the Puritan merchant class subscribe to?
Liberty, property rights, and toleration
🗽. 🏠. 😘
In what way was the age of reason (enlightenment) sympathetic to science?
They saw technology as providing a vehicle for unlimited human progress
What did Tycho Brahe see in 1572 that up ended the prevailing cosmology of the day?
A supernova. What he witnessed was a star flash to life and then disappear again, thus refuting Aristotle’s idea that the celestial spheres where immovable
What was the second thing that Tycho Brahe witnessed?
1577 a great comment that he saw was not in between the moon and earth but between the moon and Venus☄️
1585 - observed another comment ☄️
What was significant about Tycho Brahe’s thinking?
It had an empirical basis. He broke away from purely geometric analysis into a new model based on observation and measurement
Why did Copernicus look for a new theory of the cosmos?
Because none of the other theories made sense entirely and they didn’t agree with one another
What was the reasoning behind Copernicus’s idea that the earth moved?
He reasoned that either the earth had to rotate or everything around it had to rotate at much greater speeds in the opposite direction
What reasoning did Copernicus give that the earth was not the centre of the universe?
The irregular orbits of the planets seem to suggest that they have a centre other than earth
In what areas was Copernicus incorrect?
In insisting that the universe and the earth were perfectly spherical
And in moveable earth at the centre of the universe was assumed based on what to ideas?
- Common sense
2. Church doctrine
What 4 things did Galileo see with his telescope that challenged traditional beliefs?
Mountains and valleys on the moon, 🌖
the phases of Venus, 🌒
Jupiter’s moons🌝🌝🌝
Sun spots🌞
What was Galileo able to do with his telescope?
Provide observational proof for Copernicus’s theory’s
What was the result of Galileo’s recantation ?
He was the last great thinker to come out of Italy. It was the death of science in Italy. 🇮🇹
Who was a contemporary of Nicholas Copernicus?
Martin Luther. Therefore Protestantism and Copernicanism dated for the same time
Protestantism=
The decentralization of authority (priesthood of all believers)
Which 1545-1563 Church meetings decided on cosmology?
The Council of Trent
What did the Council of Trent decide about cosmology?
The sun moved, the earth did not.
What two cosmologists formed an uneasy partnership?
Brahe & Kepler
What two reasons did Tycho give as to why Copernicus was wrong in stating that the earth moved?
- To cannon balls shot in opposite directions go the same distance. If the earth moved the one going in the direction of the earth spin should have gone further.
- No stellar parallax observed
Why did Kepler support Copernicus?
Not because of anything observable. He had almost a worship of the sun. He wanted a geometrical harmony in the universe.
Copernicanism was preferable not because of superior agreement with either observation or physical theory but because…
It had greater simplicity
How did Galileo say that man should approach nature?
Not through revelation but through observation and reason
What two different ways of interpreting scripture was used by Galileo and the church?
The church used literal interpretation. Galileo use the accommodation theory
Who discovered that white light is a mixture of colors?
Sir Isaac Newton
What is the most important scientific book ever written?
Newton’s Principea - the “rule book of the universe”
What was the “annus mirabilis”?
1665-6 when Newton, force into whirl retirement, compiled a staggering array of mathematical and scientific techniques
What creation garnered Newton a place in the Royal Society?
A reflecting telescope for which he ground the lenses himself
How does newtons concept of light differ from Descartes?
Descartes thought that colour appeared when light hits an object. Newton, on the other hand, discovered that colour was already inherent in the light.
Upon what foundation did newton build his theories?
Upon the twin pillars of mathematics and experiments
Gilbert
Planets were bound to each other magnetically
Kepler
Elliptical orbits
Descartes cosmology
Action depends on contact therefore the universe is packed with tiny particles that push against each other and swirl around in patterns called vortices
What was Newton’s great coup?
To apply his three laws of motion to describe the motion of the planets, thus uniting events on earth with motion in the heavens
What does Newton’s inverse square law describe?
Gravity’s effects: the near to one another two objects are, and the heavier, the more strongly they attract each other
Compare the impact on society of the scientific revolution versus the industrial revolution
The scientific revolution had a little impact on society the industrial revolution had a huge impact
List six developments in the industrial revolution
- Textiles 👚👕👖
- Coal & iron production ⛏
- Chemical industry (dyes, bleaches) ⚗️
- Machinery 🚂
- Telegraph ☎️📞📡
- Agriculture 🚜🌽🥕🥔
How did Darwinism appeal to the feelings of the age during the industrial revolution?
Exploitation and aggressive economics - survival of the fittest
What was the triad of social revolutions in the 1700s?
- 1760 Industrial Revolution (UK)
- 1775 American revolution
- 1789 French revolution
Where did the Industrial Revolution have its start?
In the English cottage industry by craftsman
Name to forward thinking men of the industrial revolution
Mozart 🎼
Benjamin Franklin💵👓⚡️
What was the new evil in the industrial revolution?
The pace of machines
What did James Prescott Joule discover?
He established the exact rate of exchange at which mechanical energy is turned into heat
What was Darwins philosophical argument behind natural selection?
Man can change external characteristics via selection, why can’t Nature do the same a subtler level?
How did Louis Pasteur become famous?
For disproving spontaneous generation
Who was Louis Pasteur’s opponent in the debate over spontaneous generation?
Felix Pouchet
What did Pouchet use in his experiment to prove spontaneous generation?
Sterilized hay
What invention did Louis Pasteur come up with to help him disprove spontaneous generation?
Swan neck flask’s which kept air out of his experiments. No air equals no growth.
How did Louis Pasteur explain the results of Pouchet’s experiment?
He said that his mercury was contaminated. In actual fact, the organisms that grew on the sterilized hey could not have been killed by boiling.
How was the theory of spontaneous generation connected to religion?
If God did not create things, then at some point in time spontaneous generation must have happened.
What atheistic thinking did Louis Pasteur connect spontaneous generation to you?
The theory of evolution. Louis pastor was devoutly religious.
Ether
A material medium through which electromagnetic waves are propagated
How did Michaelson and Morley’s discovery of the velocity of light bring down the idea of the ether?
If the velocity of light remains the same regardless of the system, then both Galileo’s relativity principal and the role of adding velocities must be incorrect. If there was ether it would behave differently in an accelerated system.
What was striking about Einstein’s first paper?
It was simple in style and contained no references and few footnotes
What to assumptions underlie the theory of relativity?
- All laws of nature are the same into systems in uniform relative motion
- The speed of light is always the same, irrespective of what system we measure it in: whether we measure it inside the train or outside.
What is revolutionary about Einstein’s theory of relativity?
The concepts themselves in isolation are not revolutionary. It is in combining the two that our most basic concepts of space and time are changed
What type of physics was Newtonian physics good for and what type of physics was Einsteinian physics that for in comparison?
Newtons was better for speeds less than the speed of light. Einstein’s was better for speed’s near or approaching the speed of light, for example electrons
When is the divergence between classical and relativistic concepts of simultaneity apparent?
When considering simultaneous events in two systems
What is the answer to the moving clock question from the perspective of classical physics?
Two events, simultaneous in one system, are simultaneous in another. Time is absolute. You can use one set of clocks for all systems. Time flows uniformly for all observers. The moving clock does not change its rhythm.
What is the answer to the moving clock question from the perspective of relativistic physics?
A moving clock does change it’s rhythm while in motion. Two events, simultaneous in one system, are not simultaneous in another, and there is no absolute time.
What is the pillar upon which relativity theory rest?
The Lorentz transformation: A means of finding the space and time coordinates of events in one system if they are known in the other, and if the relative speed of these two systems is known.
Small velocities what is the difference between the Lorentz transformation and the Galileo transformation?
Nothing at small velocities: there are no practical differences, however, these differences become important and accessible to experimental verification when the speed approach that of light
There can be no velocity greater than…
Light
What are the two laws of conservation in classical physics?
- The law of conservation of mass
- The law of conservation of energy
You may heat a body, deform it, change it chemically, but the total mass will remain the same. Heat has neither weight nor mass. Mass is measured in grams while energy is measured in ergs.
What is the relativistic view of conservation of mass and energy?
Energy is not weightless, but has a definite mass. If the amount of energy changes, so does its mass.
Energy has mass and mass has energy.
There are not two principles of conservation. There is only one, and that is
the principle of conservation of mass – energy.
Why is direct experimentational verification of relativity theory difficult?
Because any differences between classical mechanics and relativity theory are detectible only if the speeds approach that of light
List 3 reasons why Mendel’s work was so strong.
- Clever experiments that were analyzed keenly
- Restating his findings mathematically, using his mathematical model to make predictions
- Conducting further experiments to validate predictions.
What were the three hallmarks in gene research?
- 1900 - Mendel rediscovered
- 1953 - structure of DNA discovered
- 2000 - first sequence of human genome
What mistake did Phoebus Levine make with DNA?
He used harsh chemistry which broke the DNA resulting in:
1. Small molecules
2. Four bases = equal proportions
This gave him the mistaken belief that genetic material was more likely in proteins than DNA
What discovery united the separate disciplines of classic genetics and molecular biology?
The structure of DNA
In what year was the human genome initiative announced?
1986
In what year did the human genome project officially begin?
1990
What countries were in the international Consortium on the human genome project?
🇺🇸 United States 🇬🇧 United Kingdom 🇩🇪 Germany 🇯🇵 Japan 🇫🇷 France 🇨🇳 China
In what year was the finished draft of the human genome completed?
2003
What was the first atomic particle to be identified?
The electron. 1897.
The real, physical electron implied a real, physical atom
Who developed the plum putting model of the atom?
J. J. Thomson - when electrons were stripped away from an atom what was left was positively charged
Who discovered alpha and beta particles?
Rutherford
What were Pythagoreans motivated by
Number mysticism
What six inventions made the scientific revolution possible?
- Telescope 🔭
- Microscope 🔬
- Thermometer 🌡
- Barometer ⛈
- Pendulum clock 🕰
- Air pump 🌬
