Delft Tower Experiment
In 1586, scientists Simon Stevin and Jan Cornets de Groot conducted an early scientific experiment on the effects of gravity. The experiment, which established that objects of identical size and different mass fall at the same speed, was conducted by dropping lead balls from the Nieuwe Kerk in the Dutch city of Delft. The experiment is considered a foundational moment in the history of statics, which Stevin's work helped to codify. History In the late 16th century, increasing interest in physics resulted in a number of European scientists conducting experiments into the intricacies of the scientific field. Many of these experiments were—directly or indirectly—presenting a challenge to the laws of physics formulated by Aristotle, whose theory was then the dominant school of thought in Europe. While most contemporaneous scientific experimentation was undertaken by Italian scholars, by the 1580s new ideas on physics had proliferated to the rest of Europe.Asimov, Isaac (1964). ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Fluid Dynamics
In physics and engineering, fluid dynamics is a subdiscipline of fluid mechanics that describes the flow of fluids— liquids and gases. It has several subdisciplines, including ''aerodynamics'' (the study of air and other gases in motion) and hydrodynamics (the study of liquids in motion). Fluid dynamics has a wide range of applications, including calculating forces and moments on aircraft, determining the mass flow rate of petroleum through pipelines, predicting weather patterns, understanding nebulae in interstellar space and modelling fission weapon detonation. Fluid dynamics offers a systematic structure—which underlies these practical disciplines—that embraces empirical and semi-empirical laws derived from flow measurement and used to solve practical problems. The solution to a fluid dynamics problem typically involves the calculation of various properties of the fluid, such as flow velocity, pressure, density, and temperature, as functions of space and time. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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1586 In The Dutch Republic
Events * January 18 – The 7.9 Tenshō earthquake strikes the Chubu region of Japan, triggering a tsunami and causing at least 8,000 deaths. * June 16 – The deposed and imprisoned Mary, Queen of Scots, recognizes Philip II of Spain as her heir. * July 6 – The Treaty of Berwick is signed between Queen Elizabeth I of England and King James VI of Scotland. * July 21 – English explorer Thomas Cavendish begins the first deliberately planned circumnavigation of the globe. * September 20– 21 – Execution of the Babington Plotters: The 14 men convicted of a plot (uncovered on July 17) to murder Queen Elizabeth and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots, are hanged, drawn and quartered (the first seven being disembowelled before death) in St Giles Field, London. * September 22 – Battle of Zutphen: Spanish troops defeat the Dutch rebels and their English allies. English poet and courtier Sir Philip Sidney is mortally wounded. * October 15– ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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1586 In Science
The year 1586 in science and technology included a number of events, some of which are listed here. Astronomy * The last time Mercury and Venus transit the sun at the same time. Botany * Jacques Daléchamps publishes ''Historia generalis plantarum'' in Lyon, describing 2,731 plants, a record number for this time. Cryptography * Blaise de Vigenère publishes ''Traicté des chiffres ou secretes manières d'escrire'' in Paris, describing an autokey cipher of his invention. Exploration * July 21 – Thomas Cavendish sets out from Plymouth in the ''Desire'' on the first deliberately planned circumnavigation. Mathematics * Francesco Barozzi publishes ''Admirandum illud geometricum problema tredecim modis demonstratum quod docet duas lineas in eodem plano designare'', a treatise on the construction of parallel lines. Medicine * Timothy Bright publishes ''A Treatise of Melancholie; containing the causes thereof, & reasons of the strange effects it worketh in our minds and bodies: ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Galileo's Leaning Tower Of Pisa Experiment
Between 1589 and 1592, the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei (then professor of mathematics at the University of Pisa) is said to have dropped two spheres of different masses from the Leaning Tower of Pisa to demonstrate that their time of descent was independent of their mass, according to a biography by Galileo's pupil Vincenzo Viviani, composed in 1654 and published in 1717. The basic premise had already been demonstrated by Italian experimenters a few decades earlier. According to the story, Galileo discovered through this experiment that the objects fell with the same acceleration, proving his prediction true, while at the same time disproving Aristotle's theory of gravity (which states that objects fall at speed proportional to their mass). Most historians consider it to have been a thought experiment rather than a physical test. Background The 6th-century Byzantine Greek philosopher and Aristotelian commentator John Philoponus argued that the Aristotelian assertion that o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Galileo Galilei
Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced (, ). He was born in the city of Pisa, then part of the Duchy of Florence. Galileo has been called the "father" of observational astronomy, modern physics, the scientific method, and modern science. Galileo studied speed and velocity, gravity and free fall, the principle of relativity, inertia, projectile motion and also worked in applied science and technology, describing the properties of pendulums and "hydrostatic balances". He invented the thermoscope and various military compasses, and used the telescope for scientific observations of celestial objects. His contributions to observational astronomy include telescopic confirmation of the phases of Venus, observation of the four largest satellites of Jupiter, observation of Saturn's rings, and a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hugo De Groot
Hugo Grotius (; 10 April 1583 – 28 August 1645), also known as Huig de Groot () and Hugo de Groot (), was a Dutch humanist, diplomat, lawyer, theologian, jurist, poet and playwright. A teenage intellectual prodigy, he was born in Delft and studied at Leiden University. He was imprisoned in Loevestein Castle for his involvement in the intra-Calvinist disputes of the Dutch Republic, but escaped hidden in a chest of books that was transported to Gorinchem. Grotius wrote most of his major works in exile in France. Hugo Grotius was a major figure in the fields of philosophy, political theory and law during the 16th and 17th centuries. Along with the earlier works of Francisco de Vitoria and Alberico Gentili, he laid the foundations for international law, based on natural law in its Protestant side. Two of his books have had a lasting impact in the field of international law: ''De jure belli ac pacis'' 'On the Law of War and Peace''dedicated to Louis XIII of France and the '' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Maurice, Prince Of Orange
Maurice of Orange ( nl, Maurits van Oranje; 14 November 1567 – 23 April 1625) was ''stadtholder'' of all the provinces of the Dutch Republic except for Friesland from 1585 at the earliest until his death in 1625. Before he became Prince of Orange upon the death of his eldest half-brother Philip William in 1618, he was known as Maurice of Nassau. Maurice spent his youth in Dillenburg in Nassau, and studied in Heidelberg and Leiden. He succeeded his father William the Silent as stadtholder of Holland and Zeeland in 1585, and became stadtholder of Utrecht, Guelders and Overijssel in 1590, and of Groningen in 1620. As Captain-General and Admiral of the Union, Maurice organized the Dutch rebellion against Spain into a coherent, successful revolt and won fame as a military strategist. Under his leadership and in cooperation with the Land's Advocate of Holland Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, the Dutch States Army achieved many victories and drove the Spaniards out of the north and ea ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Simon Stevin
Simon Stevin (; 1548–1620), sometimes called Stevinus, was a Flemish mathematician, scientist and music theorist. He made various contributions in many areas of science and engineering, both theoretical and practical. He also translated various mathematical terms into Dutch, making it one of the few European languages in which the word for mathematics, '' wiskunde'' ('' wis'' and '' kunde'', i.e., "the knowledge of what is certain"), was not a loanword from Greek but a calque via Latin. He also replaced the word '' chemie'', the Dutch for chemistry, by '' scheikunde'' ("the art of separating"), made in analogy with ''wikt:en:wiskunde#Dutch, wiskunde''. Biography Very little is known with certainty about Simon Stevin's life, and what we know is mostly inferred from other recorded facts.E. J. Dijksterhuis (1970) ''Simon Stevin: Science in the Netherlands around 1600'', The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dutch original 1943, 's-Gravenhage The exact birth date and the date ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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William The Silent
William the Silent (24 April 153310 July 1584), also known as William the Taciturn (translated from nl, Willem de Zwijger), or, more commonly in the Netherlands, William of Orange ( nl, Willem van Oranje), was the main leader of the Dutch Revolt against the Spanish Habsburgs that set off the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) and resulted in the formal independence of the United Provinces in 1648. Born into the House of Nassau, he became Prince of Orange in 1544 and is thereby the founder of the Orange-Nassau branch and the ancestor of the monarchy of the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, he is also known as Father of the Fatherland (''Pater Patriae'') ( nl, Vader des Vaderlands). A wealthy nobleman, William originally served the Habsburgs as a member of the court of Margaret of Parma, governor of the Spanish Netherlands. Unhappy with the centralisation of political power away from the local estates and with the Spanish persecution of Dutch Protestants, William joined the D ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Flemish
Flemish (''Vlaams'') is a Low Franconian dialect cluster of the Dutch language. It is sometimes referred to as Flemish Dutch (), Belgian Dutch ( ), or Southern Dutch (). Flemish is native to Flanders, a historical region in northern Belgium; it is spoken by Flemings, the dominant ethnic group of the region. Outside of Flanders, it is also spoken to some extent in French Flanders and the Dutch Zeelandic Flanders. Terminology The term ''Flemish'' itself has become ambiguous. Nowadays, it is used in at least five ways, depending on the context. These include: # An indication of Dutch written and spoken in Flanders including the Dutch standard language as well as the non-standardized dialects, including intermediate forms between vernacular dialects and the standard. Some linguists avoid the term ''Flemish'' in this context and prefer the designation ''Belgian-Dutch'' or ''South-Dutch'' # A synonym for the so-called intermediate language in Flanders region, the # An indicat ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |