ASTR 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Cavendish Experiment

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Physics, Engineering Physics and Astronomy
• Course: ASTR 101
• Professor: David Alan Hanes

Document Summary

In this unit, we"ll be considering various aspects of astronomy as a science. In particular, we"re going to ask why it is that we should be interested in studying astronomy, what constitutes any particular discipline as a science at all, and how astronomy differs from other sciences. Questions about the reasons for studying astronomy at all date back as long ago as socrates. In a famous discussion, he actually made the argument that the pure intellectual enjoyment of studying astronomy was enough, but there are indeed some practical reasons, as we"ll now describe. Historically, perhaps the first reason for studying astronomy was to use it to gauge the passage of time. The motion of the sun across the sky during the day allows us to watch the passing hours and indeed this is then captured in a sundial where we watch the shadow move.