Research on Scientific Revolution

Timeline

(384-322 BCE) Aristotle
Aristotle proposed that four main
compounds made up the Earth: earth, air,
water, and fire. He also proposed that these
earthly elements all moved to their natural
place and that this motion was natural
motion, which meant that it required no
extrinsic cause.

1514: The initial appearance of the
Heliocentric Theory
In 1514, Nicolaus Copernicus made his
book Commentarioulus available to his
friends. This book presented Copernicuss
ideas about a heliocentric theory, which
proposed that the center of the universe was
the Sun and that all the planets circled
around it.

1572: Brahes observation of a
supernova
In November 1572, Tycho Brahe observed a
very bright star in the constellation
Cassiopeia and had concluded that it was
farther away from the Moon. This implied
that the bright star was fixed in the stellar
sphere beyond all planets.

1596: Kepler publishes Mysterium
Cosmographicum
This book that Kepler published proposed a
three dimensional model based on nested
Platonic solids to explain the mainly two-
dimensional planetary orbital motions.

1607: Galileo discovers parabolic path of
projectiles
Galileo Galilei proposed that the parabola
was the ideal trajectory for a projectile in the
absence of disturbances such as friction and
air resistance. He did this by placing an
inclined plane on a table and providing it
with a curved piece at the bottom, which
deflected a ball into a horizontal direction.
The ball rolled over the tabletop with uniform
motion and then fell off the edge of the table
where it hit the floor and left a small mark.
The mark allowed the horizontal and vertical
distances traveled by the ball to be
measured. By repeating this process many
times with varying the balls velocities,
Galileo was able to determine the parabolic
path of a projectile.

1609: Galileo demonstrates on of his
early telescopes
With his telescope, the observer was able to
see magnified, upright images on the earth
and in the sky. He was one of the first to use
a refracting telescope to observe the stars,
planets, and moons.

1609: Keplers Astronomia nova is
published
This book contained Keplers decade long
investigation on the motion of Mars. This
book also provided strong arguments for
heliocentric theories and records the
discovery of the first two of Keplers laws,
which are that planets move not in a circular
orbits, but in elliptical orbits with the sun at
one focus and that the speed of the planet
changes at each moment such that the time
between two positions is always proportional
to the area swept out on the orbit between
these positions.

1610: Galileos Sidereus Nuncius is
published
This book goes over Galileos discovery of
the bumpy surface of the moon that was not
smooth and perfectly spherical and the
discovery of the moons of Jupiter. Both
these views were blows to the Aristotelian
world-view which was geocentric and
maintained that everything above the Earth
was impeccable.

1619: Kepler publishes Harmonices
Mundi
Here, Kepler discusses harmony and
congruence in geometrical forms and
physical phenomena. This book also reveals
Keptlers third law for planetary motion,
which is that the square of the orbital period
of a planet is directly proportional to the
cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit. This
captures the relationship between the
distance of the planets from the Sun and
their orbital periods.









1687: Newton publishes Principia
In this book, Sir Isaac Newton stated the
three universal laws of motion, which are
that an object an rest will stay at rest and an
object in motion will stay in uniform motion
unless and external forces acts of the object,
that an applied force, F, on an object equals
the rate of change of its momentum, p, with
time, and that for every action there is an
equal and opposite action. Also included in
this book is Newtons law of universal
gravitation that states that any two bodies in
the universe attract each other with a force
that is directly proportional to the product of
their masses.

1797-1798: Cavendish experiment
This was the first experiment led by Henry
Cavendish to determine the force of gravity
between masses in a lab. It also led to
accurate values for the Universal
Gravitational constant, G. This experiment
also resulted in Cavendish finding the value
for Earths density.