: Galileo’s Refracting Telescope
Principle Aim: To construct a recreation of the Galilean refracting telescope and a Newtonian reflecting telescope
Aim: To build on the ideas brought by foreigners to Venice of a primitive reflecting telescope developed by Dutch spectacle makers in Middelburg. That is, to study the properties of a concave and a convex lens in terms of magnification. We aim to collaborate these ideas into recreating a similar refracting telescope to the one reinvented by Galileo in the months of 1608. We will also try to make a more powerful and superior apparatus than Galileo's original three-powered telescope.
Introduction:
The history of the telescope goes back to the Greek philosopher Aristotle. Though commonly believed that scientists had invented the telescope rather it was invented by craftsmen. Due to that theory the origin of the telescope is in much inaccessibility and therefore impossible for us to study since the craftsmen were often not accounted for historically and by large illiterate and therefore lost. There were Dutch glass makers before Galileo who made a telescope consisting of one concave and one convex lens with a magnification of tree or four times. They tried to sell them to get a patent. The invention of this telescope quickly spread and before long Galileo heard of the telescope and immediately set to work. For the record it was Galileo who made the telescope famous due to the fact that the Dutch glass makers wanted to sell the device because to get a patent and that Galileo wanted observe the sky and planets. The scientific theory of during this period was that it was a device for “seeing faraway things seem close by”.
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
Galileo Galilei was born near Pisa, in Tuscany, on February 15, 1564. He was an Italian physicist and astronomer, who pioneered the scientific revolution that flowered from the works of the well known English physicist known as Isaac...
View Full Essay