Example research essay topic: Forced To Leave University Of Pisa - 1,507 words

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Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa Italy on February 15, 1564. Later in the 1570 's his father, Vincenzo Galileo moved his family to the near by city of Florence. He was the oldest of four children, and as a child he was the most likely inclined to be the smarter of the family. It was here that Galileo's formal education began at a school in a near by monastery.

This school was taught by monks, and for a while it was belied that Galileo would grow up to become a member of the religious orders. At the school he studied Greek, Latin and logic. since his father was a musician, he received an introduction and a musical background. Then finally in 1581 he was accepted and entered the University of Pisa, where he was studying medicine. Then after some time passed he grew bored of medicine. He found a deep interest in the field of mathematics.

It seemed that all of his time was spent studying mathematics. When he turned twenty-one he was forced to leave the university because of a lack of interest, ending his formal education. After he left all his time was spent he continued his research of mathematics. While he was studying he became an acquaintance Marchese de Monte. After Marchese de monte saw Galileo's work he grew interested in him. Shortly afterward he was taken in by Marchese to assist him in his research.

It was as if Galileo was his apprentice. They both worked together to formulate the Treatise on the Centers of Gravity. It was this paper that they wrote which first made Galileo's presence felt in the world of science. Marchese helped him to obtain a position as a professor at the University of Pisa. There he spent the next two years teaching. He was forced to leave because other professors and students themselves considered his teachings to be radical and extreme.

After he was forced to leave he headed back home to spend time with his family. A short while after he arrived to Florence his father passed away. He was forced to stay and maintain the family. Then in 1952 he managed to he was offered a job at the University of Padua. There he worked for many years with other scientist teaching and studying as well.

In 1604 Galileo heard that the rulers of Florence and Venice were becoming interested in a new creation. It was an optical instrument used to observe distant objects. This was an early version of our modern day telescope. Galileo had set out to build one of his own telescope.

Then four days later he presented his telescope to the Venice senate, and was given a double in raise and he secured a permanent job. Galileo used pendulums extensively in his experiments. Early in his career, he researched the characteristics of their motion. After investigating their behavior, he was able to use them as time measurement devices in later experiments. Pendulums are mentioned in both Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems and his Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences. In these two works, Galileo discusses some of the major points he discovered about pendulums.

Pendulums nearly return to their release heights. All pendulums eventually come to rest with the lighter ones coming to rest faster. The period is independent of the bob weight. He said the square of the period varies directly with the length. So the time the it takes for the pendulum to swing from one side to the other squared varies according to the length of the swing. Galileo observed that the bobs of pendulums nearly return to their release height.

In his experiment the pendulums were released from different heights. The height the pendulum returned to was noted and compared to the release height. Every time he released the pendulum it returned to the almost the same release height. Galileo noted that each time he swung pendulums the lighter one came to rest faster. As a test of this observation, he dropped two pendulums of the same size but different weight at the same time and height.

A bob of lead was the same as bob of cork. He released the two at the same time after he pulled them both back about five degrees. Then he saw that after the cork pendulum stopped the lead pendulum kept going. He that the average number of swings for the cork bob was less than the average number of swing for the lead bob. Galileo claimed that the pendulum period was different from the height at which they are released in Two New Sciences. To get to his conclusion he suspended two pendulums with identical lead bobs.

He released them at the same time from different angles. One was pulled back about 5 degrees while the other was released from about 45 degrees. The pendulum pulled back five degrees was allowed to travel through thirty cycles, and the numbers of complete swings of the other pendulum during this time were counted. The pendulum which traveled through the larger angle had a longer period. He saw that pendulums with different release heights do not have the same period. It appeared that pendulums with larger release heights have longer periods.

The difference was small. After studying at the University of Pisa, he was appointed to the chair of mathematics. It was at Pisa, the famous leaning tower gave way to Galileo's most famous experiment. First of all the theory which almost everybody had accepted at the time was the traditional theory of Aristotle, who believed that heavier objects fall more quickly than lighter ones. Imagine Aristotle at the top of the leaning tower of Pisa, dropping off two cannonballs, one twice as heavy as the other. According to Aristotle, it should fall twice as fast.

If it were four times heavier, it should fall four times faster. But in fact, what the leaning tower of Pisa type of experiment demonstrated, when actually performed, was that Aristotle was wrong. No matter what the difference in weight, two heavy objects will fall simultaneously at virtually the same speed. It was for there reasons that Galileo was in lack of better terms fired from his teaching position at Pisa. Galileo's interest in disproving Aristotle's Theory about falling objects, came about he had first thought about this during a hailstorm.

It was then when he saw that both large and small hailstones hit the ground at the same time. When Galileo thought about it, it didn't make sense to him. What was the chance that if hail was to fall the larger stones dropped from a higher point in the clouds or that the lighter ones started falling earlier than the heavier ones. Neither of the two seemed very probable to Galileo. When Galileo showed his class that his way of disproving Aristotle ideas he climbed the tower and through two boulders of different weights off. He had predicted that the two would fall simultaneously through his ideas of the hailstorm.

When he did it he found his results to be true. At his time, what he did by disproving Aristotle was going against society. For awhile he was considered an outcast because of his research. Galileo next set out to work with inclined planes and how gravity affected acceleration. His main interest in gravity was to see if there was a way for him to slow down or cancel gravity effect, so he could observe the rate of acceleration.

He believed that if he could get gravity off the object in motion, then as soon as it reached id full speed it wouldn't stop unless it was acted upon. Here is a demonstration of his idea. Suppose that we were to stand on top of a hill and at the bottom there is a flat surface extending for miles. Then if we were to roll a ball down the hill it would pick up speed because gravity would pull it down faster, picking up momentum. The increase of momentum is referred to as acceleration.

Now as soon as the ball reached the flat part of the hill it should continue rolling until it is acted upon. But we know that it would stop because friction would be the force acting on it. At this point Galileo reasoned that gravity is no longer pulling on the ball to increase its accelerating its motion, but rather gravity becomes constant and the ball should ideally travel in a straight line. This idea is the basic idea through which inertia is based on. Inertia is the property of matter that causes it to resist any change of its motion in either direction or speed. This property is accurately described by the first law of motion of the English scientist Sir Isaac Newton: An object at rest tends to remain at rest, and an object in motion tends to continue in motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an outside force.

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Research essay sample on Forced To Leave University Of Pisa