Who is Galileo Galilei? He is an astronomer and the founder of modern experimental science. Galileo made observations of sunspots, Saturn, and Venus. He noted that, much like the moon, Venus progresses through phases.He also discovered the law of falling bodies as well as the law of pendulum. Galileo designed a variety of scientific instruments. He developed and improved the refracting telescope, though he did not invent it.
Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa on Feb. 15, 1564. In the early 1570's, his family moved to a new location. Galileo went to school in a monastery in Florence. Galileo's father wanted his son to be a doctor. For the next four years, Galileo studied medicine and the philosophy of Aristotle. In 1585, he convinced his father
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The problem, as he saw it, was the Aristotelian theory of motion. The theory referred all motion to a stationary Earth at the center of the universe, making it impossible to believe Earth actually moves. Galileo went to work to develop a theory of motion consistent with a moving Earth.
Among the most important results of this search were the law of the pendulum and the law of freely falling bodies. Galileo observed that pendulums of equal length swing at the same rate whether their arcs are large or small. Modern measuring instruments show that the rate is actually somewhat greater if the arc is large. Galileo's law of falling bodies states that all objects fall at the same speed, regardless of their mass. It also says that, as bodies fall, the speed of their descent increases uniformation.
Because of Galileo's advanced age and poor health, the church allowed him to serve his imprisonment under house arrest in a villa outside Florence. There, he passed the remainder of his years in isolation. Eventually, he became blind. But he managed to complete his final scientific masterpiece, the Discourse on Two New Sciences, published in 1638. In this work, Galileo provided both a mathematical proof of his new theory of motion and an original study of the tensile strength of materials. Tensile strength is the maximum stress a material can withstand before breaking. He died on Jan. 8,