Galileo’s Inclined Plane
Galileo was an Italian scientist that lived in the late 1500s into the early to mid 1600s. He is famous for much of his work, but especially known for his experiments with the inclined plane. Ancient philosophers speculated that two objects with equal volume but different mass would fall at different rates. Therefore the heavier object would hit the ground first right? Well Galileo thought they were wrong so he proved it; he did this by actually trying it out and testing it, aka experimenting. So how did he do this? Well there were no clocks at that time and just dropping things would go too fast, so clever Galileo devised that rolling things down an incline worked the same as gravity and for a clock he made a device that used water. After experimenting thoroughly Galileo proved that two objects with the same volume but different masses would reach the ground at the same time.
Does acceleration occur in a falling object? If so, is there a formula for it? So when we drop an object is dropped, does it continually gets faster and faster until it hits the ground or does it fall at a constant rate the whole time. Maybe it accelerates until a certain point and then it is maxed out and can not go any faster. If acceleration does occur though then there should be some type of way to measure it. Maybe it is a formula that is now used in every physics class perhaps.
Well we went back to Galileo’s time used the same materials that he would have in his day (modernized versions of course) and we answered these questions. We used an incline that had set distances on it along with a water clock and a scale used to measure the water. The water clock works by having some container below another that is holding water along with a device used to clamp a hose in order to stop and start the water flow. We used a marble as a ball to roll down the incline in order to measure acceleration.
In the results we discovered that in fact objects do accelerate as they fall and it increases gradually. It seemed that the longer the marble continued that the acceleration was not as dramatic as starting off. The acceleration leveled off more as the marble reached the end of the ramp, but it did continue to speed up anyway.
One of the most interesting things with recreating Galileo’s experiment with inclined planes and acceleration was how he used water to measure time. It is a genius idea and he really wanted to prove he was right and try it out. Even now some people might not be as imaginative to come up with a different way of measuring time like Galileo did.
Galileo was an Italian scientist that lived in the late 1500s into the early to mid 1600s. He is famous for much of his work, but especially known for his experiments with the inclined plane. Ancient philosophers speculated that two objects with equal volume but different mass would fall at different rates. Therefore the heavier object would hit the ground first right? Well Galileo thought they were wrong so he proved it; he did this by actually trying it out and testing it, aka experimenting. So how did he do this? Well there were no clocks at that time and just dropping things would go too fast, so clever Galileo devised that rolling things down an incline worked the same as gravity and for a clock he made a device that used water. After experimenting thoroughly Galileo proved that two objects with the same volume but different masses would reach the ground at the same time.
Does acceleration occur in a falling object? If so, is there a formula for it? So when we drop an object is dropped, does it continually gets faster and faster until it hits the ground or does it fall at a constant rate the whole time. Maybe it accelerates until a certain point and then it is maxed out and can not go any faster. If acceleration does occur though then there should be some type of way to measure it. Maybe it is a formula that is now used in every physics class perhaps.
Well we went back to Galileo’s time used the same materials that he would have in his day (modernized versions of course) and we answered these questions. We used an incline that had set distances on it along with a water clock and a scale used to measure the water. The water clock works by having some container below another that is holding water along with a device used to clamp a hose in order to stop and start the water flow. We used a marble as a ball to roll down the incline in order to measure acceleration.
In the results we discovered that in fact objects do accelerate as they fall and it increases gradually. It seemed that the longer the marble continued that the acceleration was not as dramatic as starting off. The acceleration leveled off more as the marble reached the end of the ramp, but it did continue to speed up anyway.
One of the most interesting things with recreating Galileo’s experiment with inclined planes and acceleration was how he used water to measure time. It is a genius idea and he really wanted to prove he was right and try it out. Even now some people might not be as imaginative to come up with a different way of measuring time like Galileo did.