Physics 109, Fall 2007 

Galileo and Einstein: Web Links

 

Listed here are some of the web links I’ve used in teaching 109.

 

Galileo and Einstein Website

I began constructing this site in 1995, but keep adding to it…

 

Pythagoras’ Theorem

The flashlet we used to prove it.

 

Plato’s Five Regular Solids

The perfectly symmetrical shapes that Plato believed were the shapes of atoms.

 

Old Star Map

The path of the Sun through the zodiac in the summer months.

 

Inner Planets

A flashlet showing the relative motions of the Earth, Mars, Venus and Mercury.

 

Lunar Eclipse

A flashlet of the Moon passing into the Earth’s shadow, and how it appears from Earth.

 

Solar System Simulator

A very cool Nasa site which will show you how any planet (or the Moon) looks right now as seen from Earth.

 

Ptolemy’s Cosmology

 

Planet with Different Orbital Plane

Ptolemy knew that the paths of the planets could not all lie in one plane—this is why he was forced to add to his cycles and epicycles and up-and-down motion he could not reduce to a combination of circular motions.

 

The Tusi Couple: al-Tusi’s explanation of how up-and-down motion could be constructed from two purely circular motions.  (And a picture.)

 

Cordoba

 

Adelard of Bath

 

Sacrobosco

 

Aristotle’s Universe and Copernicus’s

 

Copernicus

 

Galileo’s Sketch of the Moon

 

Galileo’s Sketch of the Moons of Jupiter

 

Phases of Venus

One of Galileo’s first discoveries with his telescope was that Venus had phases just like the Moon.

 

Galileo’s Picture of Bones

 

Galileo’s Beam that Breaks when Scaled Up

 

Rotifer

 

Galileo’s Telescope

 

Galileo’s Finger

 

Tycho Brahe’s Cosmology

The Sun goes round the Earth, the planets go round the Sun.

 

Tycho Brahe Home Page: the nose, the moose, etc.

 

Kepler’s Platonic Solar System

 

Kepler’s Laws Flashlet

 

Newton’s Laws

 

Newton’s Circular Acceleration Model

 

Sound Wave Going down Tube

 

Young’s Interference Experiment

 

Michelson Morley Experiment

 

Einstein’s Light Clock

 

Synchronizing clocks on a Train

 

Appearance of a Set of Moving Clocks

 

 

People and Places

 

Miletus

A cosmopolitan trading town, reasonably open to new ways of thinking.

 

Thales

Imports geometry from Egypt, uses it to measure things, suggests natural phenomena may not need supernatural explanations.

 

Pythagoras

Knew Thales, formed a cult, proved a theorem, most likely proved the square root of 2 irrational.

 

The UVa Rotunda!

Apparently based on Pythagorean principles.

 

Jefferson’s Sundial

 

Pavilion IV Sundial