yr8_megan

=Galileo Galilei=


 * Here are a few details about my life**. I was born in Pisa, Italy on 15 February, 1564. I am the oldest child and I have 5 siblings, my youngest sibling is Michelangelo (or Michelagnolo). In the early 1570’s I moved to Florence with my family. I have 2 daughters Virginia who was born in 1600, Livia who was born in 1601, and one son, Vincenzo, who was born in 1606. I didn’t complete the medical decree at the University of Pisa that my father wanted me to do, but instead I studied mathematics.


 * I contributed to the Renaissance in the following ways**. I invented the telescope “**Galilean telescope**” which has 3x magnification So that I could study the movement of the stars. Because of that I found out that the planets moved around the sun “Heliocentricism”, not the planets moved around the earth. I also realized that the analysis Aristotle (Aristotle was a Greek philosopher) was incorrect because it didn’t account properly for a hidden force: friction “the frictional force between the surface and the object”. Aristotle’s theory was that if you push a block of wood at a constant speed across a table when we stop pushing the block of wood would stop as well. I discovered that friction is decreased (e.g. putting oil on the surface) the object would move further before stopping. From this I realised: if frictional forces could be reduced to zero (not possible in reality) an object pushed at a constant speed across a frictionless surface of infinite extent will continue at that speed forever after we stop pushing, unless a new force acts on it.


 * I think these contributions were particularly important** because both of the contributions are very important in every day life. **For example friction is a force that is acting all the time. It affects tires, shoes, brakes, road surfaces, F1 races, driving conditions, athletics, non slip mats, speed and other forces e.g. push and pull.** The discovery that the planets move around the sun has affected modern science because it explains why the earth is the right temperature to live on and why other planets aren’t suitable for human beings to live on. It also explains why we have years, seasons, and days because if the earth was in the centre of the solar system there wouldn’t be years because there wouldn’t be any thing for the earth to travel round, there wouldn’t be a the sun to be a different distance away from to make the seasons and you wouldn’t have light and dark side to earth because there would be no side of earth facing the sun because the sun would be moving round the earth and be spinning on it’s own axis. **The earth would be too cold and dark for humans to live on because the sun.**

The picture shown here is of Galileo Galilei which helps to show that he used the telescope to show the shadows on the moon and to look at the planets.

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