Physics

Featured exhibit items for physics.

Exhibit Items

6	Essays on Natural Experiences, 1666 Accademia del Cimento, (1666) The Academy of the Lynx (Accademia dei Lincei) dissolved after the death of its founder, Prince Federigo Cesi. In its place, Grand Duke Ferdinand II established the Academy of Experiment in Florence, which carried further the research program of Galileo.
7	Works, Archimedes Archimedes, (1543) Archimedes (d. 212 B.C.) developed the law of the lever with his Treatise on the Balance. He contributed to arithmetic by devising methods for expressing extremely large numbers. He deduced many new geometrical theorems on spheres, cylinders, circles and spirals.
7	New Science Tartaglia, Niccolo (1558) Tartaglia’s compass (also known as a “sector”) incorporated the functions of a quadrant and a caliper measuring device. His “new science” investigated the ballistics of cannonballs, laying a foundation for Galileo’s studies of projectile motion and free fall.
8	On Conic Sections Apollonius, (1710) Apollonius (3rd century B.C.E.) examined the properties of conic sections; namely, the: • circle (cuts a cone horizontally, perpendicularly to the axis of the cone) • ellipse (cuts a cone to make a closed curve) • parabola (cuts a cone parallel to a side of the cone) • hyperbola (cuts a cone in...
10	Commentary on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics Philoponus, (1504) In the 6th century, the Greek physicist and theologian Philoponus constructed an anti-Aristotelian theory of motion. For Philoponus, an “impressed incorporeal motive force” explains the motion of a top, a projectile, and falling bodies.
13	On the Magnet Gilbert, William (1600) Gilbert, a physician to Queen Elisabeth I, wrote the first experimental treatise devoted to magnetism. Gilbert discerned analogies between the Earth and magnets, and reasoned that the Earth itself is a magnet.
13	Opticks Newton, Isaac (1704) Newton’s contemporaries may have first heard of him through articles in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. There he reported his experiments with prisms on the nature of light and color in the atmosphere.
16	Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 1687 Newton, Isaac (1687) The Copernican idea that the Earth moves as a planet required a thorough revision of physics. Galileo undertook this task in his Discourse on Two New Sciences, published 80 years after Copernicus.
20	Physical Demonstration of the Rotational Movement of the Earth Foucault, Léon (1851) The Foucault pendulum swings in a constant plane or direction, and thus reveals the rotation of the Earth turning underneath.
21	Physical Demonstration of the Rotational Movement of the Earth Foucault, Léon (1851) The Foucault pendulum swings in a constant plane or direction, and thus reveals the rotation of the Earth turning underneath.
22	The Centenary of General Relativity, misc. items Einstein, Albert (1915-2015) The 2015-2016 year is the centenary of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. Einstein attributed the formulation of the principle of the relativity of motion to Galileo.