Abstract
Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa in 1564, the year Michelangelo died. In the same year Shakespeare was born. His father, Vincenzo Galilei, was a talented musician with unorthodox views on music, and a generally independent mind. In one of his books (Dialogo della musica antica e della moderna) he wrote: those who try to prove an assertion by relying simply on authority act very absurdly.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
M. White, Galileo ANTICHRIST, (Phoenix), 2009. The interested reader will find references to the original texts in White’s book.
- 2.
We now know that the period of such a pendulum increases in proportion to the square root of the length of the pendulum.
- 3.
see Footnote 1.
- 4.
The first to construct a working clock using a pendulum was the Danish physicist Christian Huygens, who also published (in 1673) a book on the subject: Horologium Oscillatorium.
- 5.
see Footnote 1.
- 6.
Strictly speaking, here and throughout this chapter, by motion of the rolling sphere we actually mean motion of the centre of mass of the rolling sphere. Because of the rolling aspect of the motion, extrapolating the results obtained for rolling spheres on an inclined plane to free fall, is not at all an obvious proposition. It is fully explained only in the context of Newton’s mechanics (see exercise 7.12).
- 7.
In the experiments of Galileo the inclined plane could not be very steep, in order to secure a rolling motion of the ball (avoid sliding which complicates the motion).
- 8.
see Footnote 1.
- 9.
Evangelista Torricelli, then in his early thirties, would later become grand-ducal mathematician at the Tuscany Court. He is rememberd for his discovery of the barometer.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Modinos, A. (2014). Galileo: His Life and Work. In: From Aristotle to Schrödinger. Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00750-2_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00750-2_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-00749-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-00750-2
eBook Packages: Physics and AstronomyPhysics and Astronomy (R0)