Galileo

Galileo

Born February 15, 1564 in Pisa Italy. "He was Italian mathematician, astronomer, and physicist. He has been referred to as the father of modern astronomy, the father of modern physics," and the father of science. (1) Galileo was a very intelligent man and with his great wisdom the technology he discovered, is still being used today. Galileo challenged the Catholic Church with his belief that everything in the galaxy revolved around the sun, not around the earth. He also was bold enough to publicly disagree with one of the most respected and undisputed names in science, Aristotle, by saying that if you dropped two objects at the same height that have different weights, they would both land at the same time. Galileo was also famous for proving that Aristotle's theory of physics was wrong. Aristotle's theory of Physics was when two objects were dropped at the same time, the heavier object would hit the ground first. This was proven to be wrong by Galileo by his well known experiment at the Leaning Tower of Pisa. This experiment involved two cannonballs of different weight which was dropped off at the Leaning Tower of Pisa at the same time. After these objects were dropped they landed at the same exact time and this proved that Aristotle was wrong

"Galileo made a few contributions to what we now call technology.

In 1595-1598, Galileo devised and improved a Geometric and Military Compass.

About 1606-1607 (or possibly earlier), Galileo made a thermometer, using the expansion and contraction of air in a bulb to move water in an attached tube. In 1609, Galileo was among the first to use a refracting telescope as an instrument to observe stars, planets or moons. In 1610, he used a telescope as a compound microscope, and he made improved microscopes in 1623 and after. This appears to be the first clearly documented use of the compound microscope. In 1612, having determined the orbital periods of Jupiter's satellites, Galileo proposed that with sufficiently accurate knowledge of their orbits one could use their positions as a universal clock, and this would make possible the determination of longitude. He worked on this problem from time to time during the remainder of his life; but the practical problems were severe. The method was first successfully applied by Giovanni Domenico Cassini in 1681 and was later used extensively for large land surveys; this method, for example, was used by Lewis and Clark. (For sea navigation, where delicate telescopic observations were more difficult, the longitude problem eventually required development of a practical portable chronometer, such as that of John Harrison)." (2)

"Galileo came up with the principle of flotation. He also discovered the laws of equilibrium. Galileo made many important contributions to astronomy.