Galileo And Newton

The works of Galileo Galilee, Johannes Kepler and Renè Descartes developed the basis for which Sir Isaac Newton was able to form his laws on motion. Whilst none of these geniuses met Newton they all had similar laws, which Newton was able to mold into his three laws of motion. These laws seem to have been inspiration to Newton during his studies and his eventual works. Galileo helped to develop Newton’s first law, Kepler designed a basis of Newton’s second Law and Descartes’ first and third law helped form a basis for Newton’s laws.

Galileo Galilee was an Italian Astronomer, Philosopher, Mathematician and Physicist. He was born in 1564 in Pisa, Italy and died in 1642 in Arcetri, Italy. During his life Galileo wrote many publications such as ‘Letter to Castelli’ and ‘Dialogue concerning the two chief world systems’ where he outlined his …show more content…
Kepler’s second law stated “The line joining the planet to the Sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times as the planet travels around the ellipse.” This explained why the planets would appear to move faster at times. Kepler’s final law stated, “The ratio of the squares of the revolutionary periods for two planets is equal to the ratio of the cubes of their semi major axes.” This law explained why planets have varying orbits, such as Mercury having an orbit of 88 days, whereas Pluto had an orbit of 248 years. Newton was able to extract this into his second law; Acceleration is produced when a force acts on a mass. The greater the mass the greater the amount of force needed. When gravity is applied to Kepler’s second law, it implies that ha planets obey the same laws of motion as bodies on earth. However unlike Galileo and Descartes, Kepler was not a ‘Mechanical Philosopher.’ Mechanical Philosophers believe that all objects were composed of particles, which interacted with accordance to natural