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<br>I hope that I will learn a lot from this project.
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<br>Galileo …show more content…
After that he was appointed philosopher and mathematician to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. During the whole of this period, and to the close of his life, his investigation of Nature, in all his fields, was never stopped. Following up his experiments at Pisa with others upon inclined planes, Galileo established the laws of falling bodies as they are still formulated. He likewise demonstrated the laws of projectiles, and largely anticipated the laws of motion as finally established by Newton.
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<br>In static, he gave the first direct and satisfactory demonstration of the laws of balance and the principle of virtual velocities. In the theory of static liquids (hydrostatics), he set forth the true principle of flotation. He invented a thermometer, though a defective one, but he did not, as is sometimes claimed for him, invent the microscope.
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<br>Though, as has been said, it is by his astronomical discoveries that he is most widely remembered it is not these that constitute his most substantial title to …show more content…
Hearing early in 1609 that a Dutch optician, named Lippershey, had produced an instrument by which the apparent size of remote objects was magnified, Galileo at once realized the principle by which such a result could alone be achieved, and, after a single night devoted to consideration of the laws of refraction, he succeeded in constructing a telescope which magnified three times, its magnifying power being soon increased to thirty-two.
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<br>This instrument being provided and turned towards the heavens, the discoveries, which have made Galileo famous, were bound at once to follow, though undoubtedly he was quick to understand their full significance. The moon was shown not to be, as the old astronomy taught, a smooth and perfect sphere, of different nature to the earth, but to possess hills and valleys and other features similar to those of our own globe. The planet Jupiter was found to have satellites, thus displaying a solar system in miniature, and supporting the doctrine of Copernicus. It had been argued against the said system that, if it were true, the inferior planets, Venus and Mercury, between the earth and the sun, should in the course of their revolution exhibit phases like those of the moon, and, these being invisible to the eye, Copernicus had to change the false explanation that these planets were transparent and the sun's rays passed through