Related papers: Aristotle, projectiles and guns
This paper reports the use of Tracker as a pedagogical tool in the effective learning and teaching of projectile motion in physics. When computer model building learning processes is supported and driven by video analysis data, this free…
The Finnish physicist Gunnar Nordstr\"om developed a competing theory of gravitation to Einstein's 1912-1913 gravitation theory. The equivalence principle was valid in his theory and it also satisfied red shift of the spectral lines from…
More than 150 years after their invention by Hamilton, quaternions are now widely used in the aerospace and computer animation industries to track the paths of moving objects undergoing three-axis rotations. It is shown here that they…
Four hundred years after its publication, Galileo's masterpiece Sidereus Nuncius is still a mine of useful information for historians of science and astronomy. In his short book Galileo reports a large amount of data that, despite its age,…
Various fossil evidences show that hunting is one of major means of ancient human to get foods. But the running speed of our ancestors was much slower than quadruped animals, and they did not have sharp claws and canines. So, they have to…
An exact solution for the motion in time of the swinging Atwood machine is presented. The trajectories of the so called teardrop-heart orbits are obtained considering an extended Hamiltonian and a time transformation first introduced by…
In 1933 Dayton Miller published in this journal the results of his voluminous observations using his ether drift interferometer, and proclaimed that he had determined the "absolute motion of the earth". This result is in direct conflict…
The manuscripts that presumably contained Newton's early development of the fundamental concepts that led to his Principia have been lost. A plausible reconstruction of this development is presened based on Newton's exchange of letters with…
In this paper the claim that Zeno's paradoxes have been solved is contested. Although no one has ever touched Zeno without refuting him (Whitehead), it will be our aim to show that, whatever it was that was refuted, it was certainly not…
Artificial Intelligence systems cannot yet match human abilities to apply knowledge to situations that vary from what they have been programmed for, or trained for. In visual object recognition methods of inference exploiting top-down…
In the year 1905 Albert Einstein published four papers that raised him to a giant in the history of science of all times. These works encompass the photon hypothesis (for which he obtained the Nobel prize in 1921), his first two papers on…
During the 17th century the idea of an orbiting and rotating Earth became increasingly popular, but opponents of this view continued to point out that the theory had observable consequences that had never, in fact, been observed. Why, for…
In the early 18th century, J. E. E. Bessler, known as Orffyreus, constructed several wheels that he claimed could keep turning forever, powered only by gravity. He never revealed the details of his invention, but he conducted demonstrations…
The Equivalence Principle (EP) is not one of the ``universal'' principles of physics (like the Action Principle). It is a heuristic hypothesis which was introduced by Einstein in 1907, and used by him to construct his theory of General…
Newton's First Law of Motion is typically understood to govern only the motion of force-free bodies. This paper argues on textual and conceptual grounds that it is in fact a stronger, more general principle. The First Law limits the extent…
The puzzle of the thermodynamic arrow of time reduces to the question of how the universe could have had lower entropy in the past. I show that no special entropy lowering mechanism (or fluctuation) is necessary. As a consequence of…
In 1763, Euler published "Dilucidationes de resistentia fluidorum" (Explanations on the resistance of fluids), a memoir that challenges the fluid resistance theories proposed by Isaac Newton and d'Alembert. Euler's work explores the…
One of the presuppositions of science since the times of Galileo, Newton, Laplace, and Descartes has been the predictability of the world. This idea has strongly influenced scientific and technological models. However, in recent decades,…
Einstein regarded as one of the triumphs of his 1915 theory of gravity --- the general theory of relativity --- that it vindicated the action--reaction principle, while Newtonian mechanics as well as his 1905 special theory of relativity…
General Relativity explains with precision the anomalous advance of the perihelion of Mercury, discovered by Le Verrier in 1859. Otherwise, diverse post-Newtonian proposals trying to solve this anomaly, introduce mathematical potentials…