Galileo Galilei For Kids | Bedtime History

Welcome to Bedtime History. At night, have you ever looked up at the moon and wondered what it looks like up close? Have you ever looked at the stars and sun during the day and been curious about how they move around space and why the earth revolves around the sun? Galileo Galilei once looked up in the sky and asked himself the same questions, and spent much of his life trying to discover their answers. Galileo Galilei was born on February 15, 1564 in Pisa, Tuscany. His father was Vincenzo Galilei, a famous musician who was sort of an inventor when it came to music and the practice of music. Galileo's ideas to perform experiments may have started when he was very young with his father, who liked to try out new ideas. When Galileo was young, his family moved to the city of Florence, Italy, and nearby he attended the school and eventually went to the University of Pisa. At the university, he studied medicine and thought he might become a doctor, but he was fascinated by mathematics, the study of math. So instead of studying medicine, he decided to study philosophy and mathematics. After school, Galileo taught math, mostly giving private lessons. At this time, he came up with a new way to weigh small objects and wrote a paper about it. He also began to study motion. Over time, he became more and more popular from his writings and began to lecture, which means to speak about something you are an expert at. He also started studying gravity and became a professor at the University of Pisa in 1589. It was later written that he did experiments about gravity by dropping two objects of different weights from the famous leaning tower of Pisa. When the objects hit the ground at the same time, he showed that objects fall at the same rate. For many years, it was believed an object falls according to its weight, a teaching by the ancient philosopher Aristotle. But many people believe whatever Aristotle had written, so teaching anything against Aristotle made Galileo very unpopular with some people. Because of what he was teaching, they didn't let him be a professor at the university, so he moved to the University of Padua. This was a more difficult time for Galileo because he was short on money and had to do other work to get by. But he had two children at this time and continued to study motion. By 1609, he came up with new ideas that went against Aristotle's teaching, making him even more unpopular. Not long after this, he learned that in the Netherlands, a device had been invented that when looked through showed objects far away. On his own, Galileo invented a similar instrument, which became known as a spyglass or telescope. In fact, Galileo found a way to create an even better telescope than the first ones that had been invented. Because of this amazing telescope, Galileo became very well known and respected. At this time, he also started using his telescopes to look at the night sky. He used it to draw the moon's phases and showed that the moon's surface was rough. Before this, everyone thought the moon was perfectly smooth. He also discovered new stars and other heavenly bodies, such as the moons of Jupiter. Next, he wrote a book about what he found, and this gave him even more fame. But at this time, most people believed that the earth was imperfect, and the heavens—the space above the earth—was perfect. They believed that the moon and other planets were perfectly round, and most importantly, that the sun and stars revolved around the earth. With all of his discoveries, Galileo began to prove that this was not the case—that the moon and other objects were not perfectly smooth, that the sun had spots on it, and that the other bodies moved differently than others thought. With all of that, that the earth and other planets revolve around the sun, not the other way around—this was a belief that the philosopher Copernicus had many years before and was called Copernicanism. The more Galileo talked about Copernicanism—the belief that the earth revolved around the sun—the more trouble he got into. But he believed it was important to speak up for what he found to be true. After others complained about Galileo to the church in Rome, Galileo traveled there to defend his discoveries, but the church had already sided against Copernicanism, so Galileo was told not to write or speak about it anymore. Years later, he wrote, Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it. Galileo wrote another book about some of his other discoveries, such as comets and how the moon moves the ocean's tides, and also wrote about why the earth revolves around the sun. When the book was published in 1633, he was told to come to Rome to appear before the Inquisition. The Inquisition was a council who decided what was true and false in the church. They decided to convict Galileo of false teachings and said he would need to spend the rest of his life in prison. Fortunately for Galileo, they let him stay at friends' houses and move around Italy for a time. At the age of 70, Galileo continued to work on his scientific findings, which included motion and the strength of materials. The findings he wrote down were secretly sent out of Italy into the Netherlands, where they would be safe and other scientists would read them. Galileo continued his work even until he went blind, working with a student who was with him until he died on January 8, 1642. Many years later, Galileo's discoveries about the solar system and the earth revolving around the sun became accepted scientific fact. His findings also paved the way for other great scientists, such as Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton. In 1774, Galileo's books were removed from the church's banned books list, and more recently, church leaders apologized for their treatment of Galileo. Like Galileo, you can be curious and learn more about the world around you. Galileo took the time to study subjects like math and science and even taught himself how to build a telescope so he could see the moon. You can ask lots of questions and then take the time to find out the answers. And when you don't have the answers, keep asking and digging and even start making your own guesses. Often what you come to find out for yourself won't be popular. Others may criticize you for speaking your mind. Like Galileo, you can speak up anyway. Next time you look at the moon, remember what Galileo went through to try and understand the world around him. And remember that learning about the world around you will grow your heart and expand your mind.