And today's question.
What is all this about then?
Aristotle
not the greatest scientist in the world if the truth be told
Why does this happen?
Because they WANT to be there.
Heavy things PLACE is the floor, light things PLACE is the air
So, naturally, heavy things will fall quicker than light ones.
Excellent. What's next?
Galileo Galilei (born 1564)
His father Vincenzo wrote:
“It appears to me that those who rely simply on the weight of authority to prove any assertion, without searching out the arguments to support it, act absurdly. I wish to question freely and to answer freely without any sort of adulation. That well becomes any who are sincere in the search for truth.”
Galileo decide to test Aristotle's idea.
so will we...
What do we mean by 'faster' anyway?
He discovered that the rate of change of speed was important, and he defined this as ACCELERATION.
So we have several very important concepts before Isaac Newton.
average speed
instantaneous speed
the rate of change of speed - acceleration
And a 'retarding force' which we now call:
FRICTION
Galileo's ramp experiment
in the year Galileo died, the man who would be buried here was born
Newton's 1st Law
Corpus omne perseverare in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directum, nisi quatenus a viribus impressis cogitur statum illum mutare.
Every body persists in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by force impressed
Newton's 2nd Law
Mutationem motus proportionalem esse vi motrici impressae, et fieri secundum lineam rectam qua vis illa imprimitur.
F = ma
