Galileo Research Paper

Galileo was born on February 15th, 1564 in Pisa, Italy into a family with noble roots. His father believed that Galileo should pursue medicine as it was the best occupation for him, but Galileo would later find his love and passion for mathematics and mechanics at the University of Pisa. When he was twenty-four years old, he wrote a thesis on the understandings and misunderstandings of the center of gravity for solid objects, which would help him obtain a lecture-ship at the University of Pisa. Six years later, he was offered a chair in the mathematics department at the University of Padua. He stayed at the University of Padua for eighteen years furthering his research and understanding of the sciences (Lau). All through his life, he has been

Galileo began work on critiquing Aristotle’s manuscript, De Motu. He disagreed with Aristotle’s argument that there are for kinds of terrestrial matter and only has two forms. Galileo, using an Archimedian model, describes that there is only one form of matter, which is heavy. Light matter is a form of heavy matter that dispels other bits of matter or energy that then makes the heavy matter rise in comparison to the dispelled matter. In order for him to accurately represent the claims that he made, he tried using weight and a balance; however, he found that his characterizations were inadequate and began to study the how heaviness, as a measure, was comparable to various specific gravities of bodies, or matter, that have the same volume. Basically, he was trying to create a uniform, universal measurement of heaviness to all matter. Unfortunately, he was unable to obtain a sufficient calculation and never published his revised version of De Motu. He began to study acceleration and what impacts acceleration has on the object and its surroundings. To further study acceleration, he turned to the pendulum, which showed him that time and

He is most memorable as an astronomer and modified older version of the telescope to view the heavens. He was the first to observe the moon and Jupiter in great detail. Using the modified telescope, he could see the seas of the moon, the vast planet Jupiter and its neighboring moons, which influenced his way of thinking that the Earth is not the center of the universe. This theory was originally created by the ideals of Copernicus, who believed that the Earth is not the center of the universe, but one among many planets that orbit the sun. However, Galileo did not publicly endorse Copernicus’s theory in fear of being ridiculed by the public and the church (Lau). More importantly in his viewings of the moon, he was able to view the mountainous terrain on the moon to those in Bohemia. Because of this finding, he concluded that all matter, in essence, is of the same kind. This means that no matter what earth formations or matter is found in the universe, it is all relative to each other, whether it be on celestial or terrestrial. By using his telescope, he could distinctly identify four moons of the planet Jupiter, which he would refer to as the Medicean stars. Further investigation into the four moons of Jupiter suggested that they rotate around the planet, like the moon revolves around the Earth, and thus the Earth is like any of the other planets. Galileo