Galileo, the Inclined Plane and Quadratic Equations (The New Mathematics for the Millions Book 3)

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was one of the most original thinkers of the post-Renaissance age. His life overlapped that of Johannes Kepler (1571 - 1630) and Isaac Newton (1642- 1727).

Galileo€s greatest contribution to science were not merely his discoveries but was as well his reawakening of the scientific attitude of Pythagoras and Archimedes and his recognition that scientific knowledge should be based on experimental observation and then codified by precise mathematical ideas. He is, unfortunately, remembered for his run in with the Inquisition.

Based on a careful study of his own writings, historians of science know for certain that Galileo never dropped masses from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, instead he studied the motion of falling objects both by means of an inclined plane, and by means of the pendulum (the mathematics of the pendulum will be presented in another volume of this series).

While Kepler studied the motion of the heavens, the Princeton physicist and educator Dr. Eric Rogers proffered the opinion that €œScience came down from Heaven to Earth on the inclined plane of Galileo.€

The mathematics of Galileo€s inclined plane experiment will be studied in this book, Volume Three of The New Mathematics of the Millions series).

This book also looks at quadratic equations and completing the square, the Merton Rule, the distance equation, the Ballistic Range Equation and combining the velocity and acceleration equation to derive Newton's Work-Energy Theorem.