In 1586, scientists

Simon Stevin Simon Stevin (; 1548–1620), sometimes called Stevinus, was a County_of_Flanders, Flemish mathematician, scientist and music theorist. He made various contributions in many areas of science and engineering, both theoretical and practical. He a ...

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 Delft () is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of South Holland, Netherlands. It is located between Rotterdam, to the southeast, ...

. The experiment is considered a foundational moment in the history of

statics Statics is the branch of classical mechanics that is concerned with the analysis of force and torque acting on a physical system that does not experience an acceleration, but rather is in mechanical equilibrium, equilibrium with its environment ...

, 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 Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...

, 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). Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. One of the European scientists to embrace the new view of physics was

, a Flemish engineer and mathematician. Stevin was employed as a military adviser for the court of

William the Silent William the Silent or William the Taciturn (; 24 April 153310 July 1584), more commonly known in the Netherlands as William of Orange (), was the leader of the Dutch revolt against the Spanish Habsburg Netherlands, Habsburgs that set off the ...

, and as such resided in the city of Delft while William's government occupied the city;Sarton, George (1934). "Simon Stevin of Bruges (1548-1620)". ''Isis''. 21 (2): 241–303. one of Stevin's main benefactors was

Maurice, Prince of Orange Maurice of Orange (; 14 November 1567 – 23 April 1625) was ''stadtholder'' of all the provinces of the Dutch Republic except for Lordship of Frisia, Friesland from 1585 at the earliest until his death on 23 April 1625. Before he became P ...

, whose patronage allowed Stevin to further his scientific interests. While Stevin's primary concern at court was the design of defensive fortifications, he also took interest in

fluid dynamics In physics, physical chemistry and engineering, fluid dynamics is a subdiscipline of fluid mechanics that describes the flow of fluids – liquids and gases. It has several subdisciplines, including (the study of air and other gases in motion ...

, designing a series of improvements for Delft's windmills. To gain permission to tinker with Delft's mills, Stevin employed the services of Jan Cornets de Groot, a local lawyer and future father of legal scholar

Hugo de Groot Hugo Grotius ( ; 10 April 1583 – 28 August 1645), also known as Hugo de Groot () or Huig de Groot (), was a Dutch humanist, diplomat, lawyer, theologian, jurist, statesman, poet and playwright. A teenage prodigy, he was born in Delft an ...

. The elder De Groot and Stevin became friends, with the former eventually investing in several new mills built using Stevin's design. In 1586 Stevin and De Groot collaborated to perform an experiment intended to challenge Aristotle's theory that objects fall at a speed directly proportional to their mass. To conduct their experiment, the two carried a pair of identically-sized lead balls up the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft before dropping them onto a wooden platform 30 feet below; of the pair, one ball was ten times heavier than the other. When the balls were dropped, both spheres hit the wooden platform below at substantively the same time, indicating that objects of the same size fall at the same speed regardless of mass. Stevin concluded that Aristotle's theory was therefore incorrect. While the Delft tower experiment had been a success, it was not conducted with the same scientific rigor that later experiments were; Stevin lacked an instrument to accurately measure the speed of the falling spheres, and was forced to rely on audio feedback (caused by the spheres impacting the wooden platform below) and eyewitness accounts to deduce that the balls had fallen at the same speed. As such, the experiment staged at the Nieuwe Kerk was given less credence than similar experiments, namely the more substantive work of

Galileo Galilei Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642), commonly referred to as Galileo Galilei ( , , ) or mononymously as Galileo, was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a poly ...

and his famous thought experiment at the Leaning Tower of Pisa in 1589. Stevin published his findings in his 1586 work '' De Beghinselen Der Weeghconst''—translatable to ''The Principles of Statics & The Principles of the Art of Weighing''. Stevin and De Groot's experiment is—along with those of their Italian contemporaries—considered to be one of the foundational experiments in the history of modern statics.

References

{{reflist 1586 in science 1586 in the Dutch Republic Physics experiments History of Delft

History

See also

References