Are all forces the same? Hmm, not really. Everyday forces require objects to come into contact with each other. When Isaac Newton looked at the Moon and the Earth, he knew that it was a different force that held the moon in its orbit around the Earth. The Greek philosopher Aristotle was the first thinker to try and explain gravity. He decided "gravity" was "an objects behavior as they moved to their natural place." Aristotle also understood that if you took a wooden object and a metal object and dropped them at the same time, the heaviest object would meet the ground first. Aristotle's belief about forces lasted over 2000 years until Galileo made some suggestions to help this theory along. He rolled two objects down a slope and found that both objects accelerated at the same speed... Isaac Newton took Galileo's theory and added to it a little more, he observed that the falling motion on Earth was the same motion that the Moon and other objects experience which holds them in place, in relation to one another. Newton was able to take the mystery of gravity, by observing "action at a distance" natural effects, and made an algebraic equation out of it! In Newton's day people had no reason to believe this was "something amazing"! They knew Earthly things were going on and there were things in the Heavens that God was controlling and there was no need to worry about it. By putting his gravitational theory into a quantitative theory, that was predictable and observable, he encouraged people in his day to open their minds to the universe. From ripe apples falling, to objects being tossed in a curved path, to the Moon's orbit around Earth, to planets, asteroids, and comets all revolving around the Sun, all within the hundreds of billion stars orbiting within our own Milky Way Galaxy!! Newton opened the world to amazing ideas! Then came Albert Einstein...Who took all of this and added to it, sharing with the world his idea on the "Theory of Relativity". Which describes the relationship between matter and motion through the basic explanation that objects with mass actually bend the very fabric of space and time. And that's the very tiniest explanation of the history of forces and how we came to believe in them. Credits:
The History of Gravity https://www.thoughtco.com/the-history-of-gravity-2698883 "Astrophysics for People in a Hurry" Neil DeGrasse Tyson p. 18-19, 34-35
11 Comments
|
Mrs. TaylorI love science! Everything about the world is interesting and never boring. I love to study plants, animals, insects, and people. My favorite subjects are my students who are the most unique organisms on the planet! Categories |