In Italy, 1589, Massimo drops lunch to his uncle from a bridge, so the food falls into his uncle's boat. One day, Galileo notices that the bread and wheel of cheese land in the boat at the same time. But Aristotle had said that heavy things fall at a faster rate than light ones. Will Galileo and Massimo be able to prove Aristotle's theory wrong?
When the scientist Galileo befriends a bright farm boy, Massimo, the two begin to investigate the science of motion. To test their theories, they conduct one of the most famous experiments of all time, dropping objects from the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
An “intriguing and accessible” (Publishers Weekly) interpretation of the life of Galileo Galilei, one of history’s greatest and most fascinating scientists, that sheds new light on his discoveries and how he was challenged by science deniers. “We really need this story now, because we’re living through the next chapter of science denial” (Bill McKibben). Galileo’s story may be more relevant today than ever before. At present, we face enormous crises—such as minimizing the dangers of climate change—because the science behind these threats is erroneously questioned or ignored. Galileo encountered this problem 400 years ago. His discoveries, based on careful observations and ingenious experiments, contradicted conventional wisdom and the teachings of the church at the time. Consequently, in a blatant assault on freedom of thought, his books were forbidden by church authorities. Astrophysicist and bestselling author Mario Livio draws on his own scientific expertise and uses his “gifts as a great storyteller” (The Washington Post) to provide a “refreshing perspective” (Booklist) into how Galileo reached his bold new conclusions about the cosmos and the laws of nature. A freethinker who followed the evidence wherever it led him, Galileo was one of the most significant figures behind the scientific revolution. He believed that every educated person should know science as well as literature, and insisted on reaching the widest audience possible, publishing his books in Italian rather than Latin. Galileo was put on trial with his life in the balance for refusing to renounce his scientific convictions. He remains a hero and inspiration to scientists and all of those who respect science—which, as Livio reminds us in this “admirably clear and concise” (The Times, London) book, remains threatened everyday.
Acclaimed author-illustrator Bonnie Christensen adopts the voice of Galileo and lets him tell his own tale in this outstanding picture book biography. The first person narration gives this book a friendly, personal feel that makes Galileo's remarkable achievements and ideas completely accessible to young readers. And Christensen's artwork glows with the light of the stars he studied. Galileo's contributions were so numerous—the telescope! the microscope!—and his ideas so world-changing—the sun-centric solar system!—that Albert Einstein called him "the father of modern science." But in his own time he was branded a heretic and imprisoned in his home. He was a man who insisted on his right to pursue the truth, no matter what the cost—making his life as interesting and instructive as his ideas.
Galileo Unbound traces the journey that brought us from Galileo's law of free fall to today's geneticists measuring evolutionary drift, entangled quantum particles moving among many worlds, and our lives as trajectories traversing a health space with thousands of dimensions. Remarkably, common themes persist that predict the evolution of species as readily as the orbits of planets or the collapse of stars into black holes. This book tells the history of spaces of expanding dimension and increasing abstraction and how they continue today to give new insight into the physics of complex systems. Galileo published the first modern law of motion, the Law of Fall, that was ideal and simple, laying the foundation upon which Newton built the first theory of dynamics. Early in the twentieth century, geometry became the cause of motion rather than the result when Einstein envisioned the fabric of space-time warped by mass and energy, forcing light rays to bend past the Sun. Possibly more radical was Feynman's dilemma of quantum particles taking all paths at once — setting the stage for the modern fields of quantum field theory and quantum computing. Yet as concepts of motion have evolved, one thing has remained constant, the need to track ever more complex changes and to capture their essence, to find patterns in the chaos as we try to predict and control our world.
This fascinating, scholarly study by one of the world's foremost authorities on Galileo offers a vivid portrait of one of history's greatest minds. Detailed accounts, including many excerpts from Galileo's own writings, offer insights into his work on motion, mechanics, hydraulics, strength of materials, and projectiles. 36 black-and-white illustrations.
At the age of nineteen, the young Galileo Galilei was scandalous, friendly, somewhat impertinent and so bright that he could outshine any other personality. His main defect was that he wasn't able to keep his mouth closed. To make things even more problematic, he'll come across several challenges: a charming young lady (determined to ignore him), five supernatural murders, a gang of thieves and dishonest people, a brainless gentleman and a league of poisoners who intend to sow terror in the court of the Duke of Mantua. Also, in this book you will find: - A short biography of Galileo Galilei. - His most important discoveries and inventions. - The mathematics keys of encrypted messages and their application in e-mail messages. - The Tower of Pisa experiment.
