Thursday, September 17, 2015

The Copernican Revolution: Aaron, Christian, Nicolas


https://youtu.be/tucyUtY7fUM


Sources:
 http://www.polaris.iastate.edu/EveningStar/Unit2/unit2_sub3.htm
 http://m.teachastronomy.com/textbook
 Discovering the Essential Universe, 6th Edition

6 comments:

  1. What are epicycles? Also, when Galileo observed the "bodies" from his telescope such as comets and asteroids, was he able to tell them apart at the time?

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  2. Why did Kepler decide to abandon the idea of circular orbits?

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    1. Kepler believed that planetary orbits should be perfect circles, so he worked to match circular motions to Tycho’s data. Kepler found out that his assumptions and Tycho’s work about Mars' orbit in a circle were wrong. He decided to abandon the idea of circular orbits and started working on other shapes including the oval. After years of working with different shapes he found the shape that fits the observed path of mars and other planets was an oval.

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  3. How did Copernicus gather that the earth was involved in triple motion? What evidence did he use?

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  4. How did Kepler observe, and come up with his three laws?

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    Replies
    1. His first two laws were mathematical and based on repeated trial and error. To find his third law, he looked for any consistency in the universe that he could say was a "harmonic balance." When he finally did it turned out to b the relationship between the speed of planets' orbits and their distance from the sun.

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