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Oct 2007
37m 54s

Lecture 15: The Watershed - Tycho and Ke...

Richard Pogge
About this episode
In the generation following Copernicus, the question of planetary motions was picked up by two remarkable astronomers: Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler. Tycho was a Danish nobleman and brilliant astronomer and instrument builder whose high precision naked-eye measurements of the stars and planets were to be the summit of pre-telescopic astronomy. Kepler was ... Show More
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Oct 2007
Lecture 16: The Starry Messenger - Galileo and the Telescope
Tycho reached the limits of what could be done with the naked eye. A new technology was required to extend our vision: the telescope. This lecture introduces Galileo Galilei, the contemporary of Kepler who was in many ways the first modern astronomer, and describes his many disco ... Show More
41m 48s
Oct 2007
Lecture 17: On the Shoulders of Giants: Isaac Newton and the Laws of Motion
Copernicus, Kepler, Tycho, and Galileo together gave us a new way of looking at the motions in the heavens, but they could not explain why the planets move they way the do. It was to be the work of Isaac Newton who was to sweep away the last vestiges of the Aristotelian view of t ... Show More
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Oct 2007
Lecture 18: The Apple and the Moon - Newtonian Gravitation
What is Gravity? Starting with the properties of falling bodies first formulated by Galileo, Newton applied his three laws of motion to the problem of Universal Gravitation. Newtonian Gravity is a mutually attractive force that acts at a distance between any two massive bodies. I ... Show More
40m 8s
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