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Re: [Phys-L] To gal or not to Gal.



There was a four hundred year celebration of Galileo and the Telescope in 2009, that
included a staged mass drop at Pisa, see
http://www.theastronomers.org/view/704/galileos-falling-bodies-experiment-recreated-at-pisa/

Note I am not claiming G actually did this expo himself; also note the re-enactment used identical
shaped objects with low multiples of the mass difference .

Dan M


Dan MacIsaac, Associate Professor of Physics, SUNY-Buffalo State College
462SciBldg BSC, 1300 Elmwood Ave, Buffalo NY 14222 USA 1-716-878-3802
<macisadl@buffalostate.edu<mailto:macisadl@buffalostate.edu>> <http://PhysicsEd.BuffaloState.edu<http://physicsed.buffalostate.edu/>>
Physics Graduate Coordinator & NSF Investigator for ISEP (MSP) and Noyce

On Sep 25, 2013, at 10:37 AM, jbellina <inquirybellina@comcast.net<mailto:inquirybellina@comcast.net>> wrote:

Yes indeed, the Pisa experiment has been repeated, not at Pisa, and it is clear he did not do it. Galileo often wrote about gedanken experiments as if he did them, and real experiments as if he imagined them.

joe
On Sep 24, 2013, at 8:18 PM, Bernard Cleyet wrote:

According to Wikipedia, G. G. did the Pisa tower xpmt. Instead, as I thought, a "Gedanken". ***

"The gal is named after Galileo Galilei, a physicist who made the first measurements of the Earth's gravity, and who dropped items out of the Tower of Pisa to see if weight had a bearing on the time taken for them to fall."

Gal (unit) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal_(unit)

What do you expts write?


bc thinks he may want to correctly correct the Wiki. and joyously awaits a free 60 micro-gal resolution sensor from the USGS.

*** My modern phys instructor (UCSB -- 1957) said G.G. posed the question, what happens when one cuts the rigid thread between two unequal masses while falling?

The talk discusses the non-SI, but not the experiment. And I would add the Eötvös confirmation.
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