ASTA01H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Hyperbola, Net Force, Centrifugal Force
Document Summary
Ancient astronomy has shaped not only our scienti c thinking but also our culture, art, language, religions and traditions. The ancient greeks were interested in building models of nature based on reasoning and observation. Thales of miletus, an in uential scientist and mathematician, assumed that the world was understandable and attempted to create models to explain major events in the universe. In 500 bce, pythagoras suggested that the earth was a sphere and not at. His model was primarily based on the widely held belief that the sphere is an object of geometrical perfection. Based on this spherical model, eratosthenes was able to calculate the earth"s circumference by observing the position of the sun at noon in two different cities on the rst day of summer. At the time of his birth and throughout his life, astronomy was based on ptolemy"s (~150 ce) model of aristotle"s universe.
