Galileo Research Paper

Galileo was an Italian astronomer, physicist, engineer, philosopher, and mathematician. He was born in Pisa in 1654 and played a very important role in the scientific revolution during the Renaissance. Galileo was the first to describe speed. Before Galileo, most people did not put much thought into moving things. They just called them vaguely and simply “slow” or “fast”. Galileo is acclaimed for being the first individual to calculate speed by analyzing the distance covered and the time it takes. Before performing any experiments, Galileo hypothesized that objects had the same acceleration because of gravity. Galileo tried to answer a question with his experiments using inclined planes: Is it true that a steeper slope will create a faster …show more content…
We were to set the golf ball at the shortest of the measured distances along the ramp. Next, we timed how long it would take the golf ball to hit the floor after it was let go. We performed three trials for each ramp and recorded our times in the data table. We were to repeat this step for the other measured distances along the ramp including 30 cm, 60 cm, and 100 cm. Erin Jones and I hypothesized that the higher the plane, the paster the golfball would go down it. I also thought that the smoother the surface, the faster the acceleration. We thought that both of these things would contribute to how fast the golfball would go down the plane. The different surfaces gave Erin and I different results. All of the different surfaces included smooth, felt, sandpaper, and rubber mat. As we anticipated, the golf ball went down the smooth surface faster than the rest of the surfaces because it had the least amount of friction. According to our results, the sandpaper had the most amount of friction caused by the roughness of the sand on the paper. The rougher surfaces made the movement of the ball slower than the smoother ones. The data my parter and I collected was put into a data table showing the amount of seconds it took for the ball to roll down the different surfaces and different distances including 30 centimeters, 60 centimeters, and 100 centimeters. The data we recorded for the ball rolling down at a 60* angle had significantly larger times than that of the 30* angle. In order to calculate the acceleration due to gravity, we used the equation g=2d/t^2. For d, we plugged in the distance it was going. For t, we plugged in the average amount of seconds it took to roll down. After completing the problem, we found out how close to gravity we came during the experiment. Though most of our data is correct, it is likely that there could be a couple of