I survived the first week of homeschooling and now we are headed to the cabin to recoup. Here's a question related to what my son is learning this week.
Category: Astronomy
Who helped prove Kepler's theory of elliptical planetary orbits over the Ptolemaic (geocentric) and Copernican (heliocentric) models?
St. Alex says, place your answer in the form of a question in the combox, say an Our Father while you wait for the answer to be revealed. Demerits for using Google. Educated guesses are welcome and encouraged.
Your humble prize for a correct answer is the satisfaction of knowing you are a brainiac.
BTW: If my son was really learning his in his first week of Kindergarten I'd need more than a weekend to prepare the next lesson :) We're really learning phonics and about God creating the world and about the ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia.
Prayers for those in the path of Ike.
9 comments:
Wow, how advanced your son is!
And you said you were nervous about starting homeschool!
heehee
Okay, I didn't know if it should be a saint...I didn't look it up, but the only person I can think of is
Who is Galileo?
Who is Tycho Brache (by observation) annd Isaac Newton (mathematically).
Good guesses! A hint is that there was a Saturn probe bearing this man's name. Supposedly it looked at one of Saturn's moons and scientists concluded the moon was made of methane, which conflicts with most organic chemistry thought that there must be a natural (organic) source to create methane. No ideas how a big moon of methane was formed out in the middle of no where.
You guys are SO much smarter than me...
Cassini & Huygens are both of the same time period, but I could find no link between either of them & Kepler. Huygens seems to have been the mathematician so I'm going to guess "Who is Huygens"?
AA:
It's Cassini. According to the book I bought at Half Price, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, by Thomas Woods, p. 110-111, it says, "The Italian astronomer Giovanni Cassini, a student of the Jesuits Riccioli and Grimaldi, used the observatory at the splendid Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna to lend support to Kepler's model....."
Sanctus: I don't know this stuff, I look it up :) Heck, I have trouble even knowing what day it is.
Um, I mean pages 111-112...seems I have a problem with numbers ;-}
I goofed 2. I may have been looking at the wrong Cassini (there were 2 or 3 of them, all related and all astronomers). Also Kepler used Tycho's obervations in his calculations, not the other way around. (We astronomers always have our heads in the stars...)
I am determined to get one of these right one of these days. I AM SO TEMPTED TO CHEAT! I have to force myself to not cheat. SO, I will probably never get one right.
hmph
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