Improvement in physics and chemistry during the
Renaissance.
The Renaissance:
The Renaissance from the French ri- "again" and nascere "be born) is a cultural and scientific
movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Florence in the Late Middle
Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the
historic era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not uniform across Europe, this is a general
use of the term. As a cultural movement, it encompassed a resurgence of learning based on classical
sources, the development of linear perspective in painting, and gradual but widespread education
reform. Traditionally, this intellectual transformation has resulted in the Renaissance being viewed as
a bridge between the Middle Ages and the Modern era
During the Renaissance, great improvements occurred in geography, astronomy, chemistry, physics,
mathematics, manufacturing, and engineering. The rediscovery of ancient scientific texts was bringed
back after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, and the invention of printing which would stimulate
learning and allow a faster propagation of new ideas. So many new physical, mathematical and
chemestrial laws and formulas were discovered by e.g., Aristotle, Nicolaus Copernicus and Johannes
Kepler Galileo Galilei, and many others, these man invented very important laws and formulas
Aristotle:
Aristotle was a Greek ‘’philosopher’’ which literally means love to think. because of the words
‘’philos’’ (loving) and ‘’sophos’’ (thinking)
Aristotle lived from 384 BC-322 BC at the beginning of the Renaissance
He also was a student of Plato and he teached Alexander the Great.
He helped the Greeks with defending their idea of dealing with motion.
How the Greeks dealt with motion:
According to he Greeks:
Is that motion can be attributed to two things: natural and unnatural motion:
Natural motion is that every element is layered, at least if the lightest element is on top and the
heaviest on the bottom.
For example: if there’s rain the raindrops will fall to the ground, because it is an element
(water/liquid) and it wants to go to the certain layer, because water is lighter then air.
The Greeks also thought of ‘’force’’ which is also a kind of motion. Force is like if an car wouldn’t
move anymore because it’s ran out of gas it wouldn’t move unless if you push the car with a force.
Nicolaus Copernicus
Nicolaus Copernicus was born in Poland in 1473 A.D. He invented an easier way to calculation to put
the sun in the middle (instead of the Earth) with planets around it. Which made him the first person
who came up with the idea of the ‘’heliocentric’’ (Helios refers to he sun and centric to the word
center) theory.
the heliocentric system.
Johannes Kepler:
Johannes Kepler was born in 1571 AD he was an important man in history of mathematics
He accepted the main ideas of Copernicus
But he came up with three more things
He calculated the that the little ‘’loops’’ weren’t a product of cycles and epicycles, but they where a
product of ellipses. An ellipse s a plane curve that results from the intersection of a cone by a plane in
a way that produces a closed curve. Circles are special cases of ellipses, obtained when the cutting
plane is orthogonal to the cone's axis.
And he found out: how closer you are to the sun how faster you move.
And he also discovered that the distance travelled in one month is smaller in A than in B, the planet
Has to move faster in A than in B to reach the distance it has to travel.
Later on Johannes Kepler started to work together with the Danish scientist Ticho Brahe
Conclusion:
The Renaissance was simply a change in thinking as for art, religion, philosophy, inventing and
writing as well for: science, mathematics, physics, chemistry, geography and astronomy
This caused people to think to create and to invent. Due this many people occurred to be an important
man in history of science.
Koen Barkel TT2L 2011.