Galileo's Discoveries Surrounding Gravity

The question I will be addressing is, “How did Aristotle’s ideas about the elements and natural place eventually give rise to Galileo’s discoveries surrounding gravity, Newton’s universal law of gravitation, and Einstein’s general theory of relativity?” In the present day, gravity is known as a force that pulls together two objects, where the amount of force is related to the amount of mass of the two objects. It is what keeps our feet on the ground, because of the Earth’s extremely strong gravitational pull. We have extensive knowledge about gravity today due to the work of four monumental philosophers: Aristotle, Gaileo, Newton and Einstein. Aristotle came up with the concept of natural place to explain gravity. Galileo realized that all

Galileo was the first to correctly realize that objects fall with a constant acceleration, not a constant speed, as Aristotle believed. That would mean that the speed of an object increases as it falls, until it reaches terminal velocity. Galileo also realized that, without air resistance, all objects fall with the same acceleration. This contradicted Aristotle’s belief that the speed an object falls was related to its mass. Galileo confirmed this hypothesis with the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment. Galileo dropped both a lead ball and a wooden ball off the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The two balls were the same size, but did not have the same mass. Galileo recorded that they hit the ground at exactly the same time. This contradicted Aristotle, who would say that the heavier ball would hit the ground first. Galileo realized that the reason why some objects do not fall at the same rate is due to air resistance. For example, a feather and a brick do not hit the ground at the same time, because a feather is more greatly affected by air resistance. This is the same concept that explains why parachutes help to slow down skydivers. Galileo realized that, if air resistance were eliminated, the feather and the brick would hit the ground at the same time. Without air resistance, all objects fall with the same acceleration, which was later determined to

Einstein became dissatisfied with Newton’s theory of physics and sought to develop his own that incorporated the laws of electromagnetic fields, but still remained true to classical mechanics. Einstein proposed the general theory of relativity, which contained a radically new theory of gravity. He proposed that gravity was not a force, as Galileo and Newton believed, but rather a distortion in space-time, or the fourth dimension. It is an accepted fact that two objects moving in parallel, unaffected by outside forces, will never collide. However, Einstein contradicted this. He theorized that the objects will collide at one point due to gravity attracting the two objects to each other. But, according to Einstein, gravity is not a force. Instead, Einstein hypothesized that gravity is a curve of the fourth dimension, and can be shown by using spherical coordinates. Two objects traveling in straight lines on a sphere will collide at the poles of the sphere. This was an important accomplishment by Einstein because it established a connection between gravity and