How Galileo Affected Our Lives

Galileo made many contributions to society. He is the reason we have such advanced telescopes. In his time and day, people could not see much farther than what people can see with the naked eye, he wanted to change that. He took the idea of the telescope and improved it so much that it has led to discoveries as countless as the stars. Although he had a hard life, his life was a productive one with discoveries and progressions throughout the years ago even more than seventy years.

Although he was more of a scientist than a mathematician, for many of his scientific discoveries he used mathematical formulas and practices of his day.

Galileo and the Family

Galileo (full name Galileo Galilei), was born in Italy many years ago in the year 1564. He was a very significant man and had done many things in his lifetime. His father was not a mathematician, but rather a musician. Oddly enough he was not the first significant person in his family.

His father made contributions to the music industry as well in things like theory. According to History.com, he tried to study medicine but found that he would rather stand around doing mathematical problems. (2018) So he decided to learn more about mathematics. He eventually went into mathematics and philosophy instead of medicine. Although he taught mathematics, he did not have a degree at this time. He was acutely interested in the works of Aristotle and thoroughly enjoyed working with mathematics. Eventually, he disproved one of his role model’s theories.

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By experimenting he proved that Aristotle’s theory that the time it takes for an object to fall is proportionate to its weight, was wrong (Heldon 2018).

Galileo and the Gold

In his time, people did not have fancy large machines that could tell you how dense something was. People thought the best way to measure jewelry was to weigh it in the air and after that, they would put it in water to see how much water it displaced. This could tell you (roughly) whether a metal was pure or how unpure it was. However, galileo thought he could improve on this. He came up with a tool called a hydrostatic balance. The hydrostatic balance consisted of wire that wrapped around the arm opposite that which you want to measure. While measuring you could count how many times that wire wrapped and that was how he could tell what the proportion was of one metal to another.

Galileo and the Stars

When Galileo heard of an instrument that let people see the far way he thought it was a good idea. However, he could not get the instructions on how to make this instrument, so he tried to create one himself. By this time many people were coming up with ways of creating this instrument. He eventually taught himself how to construct one by himself. With this instrument, he could indeed see far off, but he wanted to do better. He decided to tweak his idea and create a better one. He played around and studied quite a bit and eventually he created a better prototype. As this process repeated itself, he created better and better telescopes. He improved the magnification from a low nine to a very high thirty-two (Eastridge, 2007). Of Course to make this telescope beter he applied mathematics. By using math he realized that lenses that have large distances between them can make you see things up close while close lenses can let you see objects that are far away. His telescope would late become the basis on which the modern refractor telescope is based. He would use very small numbers and had to do quite a few calculations while working on this instrument. Without mathematics, he would not have made it possible to see new (at least to us) stars. He was even given the amazing and rare honor to name the moons of Jupiter. (Fowler, 2001) Now people do not get to name things like major moons because they have all already been named by people like Galileo who just wanted to win some favor.

Galileo and the Earth

For a long time, the people who inhabited the earth had no idea of what it was doing in space. They knew that they were on earth. And somewhere there was a sun. They also knew that there were stars. However, they had absolutely no inkling as to was revolved around what and how everything stuck together. Galileo changed this. He used his superior telescope skills to determine that the earth was traveling around the sun. To do this, he used observation and mathematics.

Galileo and the Tower of Pisa

Back before Galileo, Everyone believed in Aristotle’s theory that the heavier the object the faster it falls. In theory, it sounded right, so why would the people not believe the man? It turned out that it was not correct and Galileo proved it. Since he was near the Tower of Pisa, he decided to use it to prove his theory, He thought to prove that the weight of an object does not directly affect the amount of time it takes it to fall. By dropping things off the top, he proved that, unlike what we used to believe, gravity works the same on everything (Dauben, 2017).

Galileo and the Pendulum

While he did not invent the pendulum Galileo did make discoveries involving it. He said that the pendulum was independent of the amplitude. Which would mean that later you could measure out steady beats with a pendulum. Beats such as a heartbeat of a patient could be measured. Also, beats such as a count of a musical song could be measured (Fermi, 1999).

Galileo and the Mathematics

Galileo Galilei liked Mathematica a lot so he used it a lot. Galileo could not have done most of what he accomplished in his life without the use of math. Having studied it extensively he was a talented mathematician. He was offered jobs teaching math. He was very interested in the theories of motion. He had proved earlier that one theory everyone indeed assumed was true was indeed not true. He went on to try and explain more about how motion works. He wanted to know if the incline sped up or slowed down the rate at which a ball could roll down it. To do this he had to do extensive research and many experiments. He tried different angles dramatically dramaticallydramatically at which the inclines would be and how fast each ball rolled each incline. He realized that a steep incline would not be that much different from a dead drop, but a lesser incline would make the speed decrease dramtically. He could then use ratios to determine experiment experimentexperiment how long an object took to roll to the bottom of a ramp., and their relationship. If this experient is done the difference in the incline and difference in the time can create a graph. The graph is a function since you cannot have it two times at a time. With the correct variables, he made many new improvements. (Dauben, 2012).

Galileo and the Projectiles

Yet another thing that sameitsamealso quadratic Galileo discovered had to do with projectiles. He had a thought one day that maybe when something is being thrown, it follows a specific arc. Therefore when a projectile is thrown with the also quadraticquadraticssamesame force from the same angle at the same starting place, the arc will be the same every time. He found that projectiles followed a specific shape. This shape is what we now call the parabola. Every function that is squared is a parabola (Dauben, 2012). Since his day we have gwon in that aspect. We alsoquadratics call curves like these quadratics. We now know exactly how to predict the curve projectiles will make. We also have very specific formulasparabola for most things. We have expanded upon his knowledge to create things like the quadratic formula. He has helped advance the practiceparabola of parbola math and has therefore helped the world go farther in their studies.

Galileo and the Paradox

Galileo may not have made many improvements in the field of math (surelysciencesurely science is not as science manyscience as scienc,) but he did leave the world with a paradox. To quote him,

First, some numbers are squares, while others are not; therefore, all the numbers, including both squares and non-squares, must be more numerous than just the squares. And yet, for every square, there is exactly one positive number that is its square root, and for every number, there is exactly one square; hence, there cannot be more of one than the other.

He said that there were as many perfect squares as there are positive integers. At first, this may seem crazy since, on a small scale, this is most definately not true. However when you look at it his way since numbers can go on forever, and since any number can be multiplied by itself, it would only stand to reason that for every single number there is a perfect square.

Galileo and His Legacy

Galileo Galilei was one of the most productive scientists in definite definitely among definitely has a place among the greats. He had children and they continued his work. They made further improvements in the mathematics industry. Galileo made it possible to see the world beyond our world, and for that, many people are gratefulingratefulin. His advancements inmany science the telescope led to many many more advancements in science and especially space science.