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Leonardo da Vinci’s experiments explored gravity as a form of acceleration

214 pointsby PikelEmiover 2 years ago

15 comments

n4r9over 2 years ago
I may be missing something here, but there&#x27;s a conceptual leap from &quot;the acceleration produced by gravitational force&quot; to &quot;gravity as a form of acceleration&quot;.<p>Da Vinci certainly appears to be exploring the former. The latter was Einstein&#x27;s great insight. I don&#x27;t see much in the article to persuade me that da Vinci was equating gravity and acceleration in the way Einstein did, and so the title seems a little too suggestive.
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rerdaviesover 2 years ago
Umm.<p>But the water droplets&#x2F;sand particles do NOT form a straight line if you accelerate the jug. You have to decelerate the jug with exactly the right timing to form a straight line, not accelerate it. Nor do the beads in the Caltech video form a straight line, despite their dishonest attempt to arbitrarily impose a straight line on beads that are clearly not in a straight line.<p>In the second diagram, which is alleged to be an attempt to plot acceleration due to gravity to the position of an accelerating water jug, the values [0,1,2,4,8] are marked on the x-axis, and [0,-1,-2,-4,-8] on the y-axis. Da Vinci then plots lines from [0,-8] to the points (0,0),(1,0),(2,0),(4,0),(8,0). Doing so doesn&#x27;t really establish any sort of relationship between accelerating jugs and acceleration due to gravity, even allowing for an incorrect equation of motion for an accelerating object.<p>Da Vinci spent most of his early career trying to sell military technology to potential patrons (largely if not completely unsuccessfully). One of the pieces of technologies he was trying to sell was a process for calculating improved artillery range tables (tables of elevation vs. range). He didn&#x27;t manage to sell that either.<p>The second diagram is more easily interpreted as a doodle that makes an unsuccessful attempt to scry a relationship between elevation and range for artillery pieces.
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credit_guyover 2 years ago
&gt; &quot;What we saw is that Leonardo wrestled with this, but he modeled it as the falling object&#x27;s distance was proportional to 2 to the t power [with t representing time] instead proportional to t squared,&quot; Roh says. &quot;It&#x27;s wrong, but we later found out that he used this sort of wrong equation in the correct way.&quot; In his notes, da Vinci illustrated an object falling for up to four intervals of time—a period through which graphs of both types of equations line up closely.<p>All lines look straight if plotted on a log-scale and drawn with a thick enough marker.
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josefrescoover 2 years ago
Just finished reading Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson. Was a very good read, learned a lot about da Vinci that I was never taught or discovered on my own.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;book&#x2F;show&#x2F;34684622-leonardo-da-vinci" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;book&#x2F;show&#x2F;34684622-leonardo-da-vin...</a>
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boomboomsubbanover 2 years ago
A recent discussion on the topic<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34764318" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34764318</a>
s1artibartfastover 2 years ago
I would think that individuals from antiquity would understand that an object rolling down hill picks up speed, or a rock dropped from higher hits harder.<p>The existence of acceleration aspect may not have been novel, but measuring the rate seems to be the novel part
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thefoolofdaathover 2 years ago
IMHO, this is less surprising discovery about him considering this probing is around 300 years ahead of his time, and Da Vinci already has proof for concepts 500 ahead of his time.
dborehamover 2 years ago
Speaking of Leonardo: I noticed that the Mona Lisa has a new much better (more transparent) protection glass, at least new since I last visited a few years ago. It makes it imho more worthwhile to go see it. Also pro tip, go in February -- there&#x27;s only a moderate crowd, not a crazy dense throng as in the summer.
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dukeofdoomover 2 years ago
This was invented after his time: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=fIjnFIwPmIE">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=fIjnFIwPmIE</a><p>But Gravity powered clock mechanisms existed during Da Vinci&#x27;s time. I believe.
paxysover 2 years ago
Mathematicians and physicists in several parts of the world – including Europe – had a pretty solid scientific understanding of gravity and acceleration well before the 1500s, so I&#x27;m not sure why this is so notable.
orwinover 2 years ago
Da Vinci&#x27;s work on water&#x27;s management and hydrolics ultimately pushed us through the technological wall the Romans hit, that lead toward waterworks and the first industrial revolution.
p1mrxover 2 years ago
Would it be correct to say that you feel gravity&#x2F;weight because the ground is accelerating upwards in your local reference frame, and your body&#x27;s inertia resists that acceleration?
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electroagendaover 2 years ago
Domingo de Soto (1494-1560) also indicated that gravity produced accelerarion way earlier than Galileo Galilei.
pbj1968over 2 years ago
This Leonardo is really going places.
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olddustytrailover 2 years ago
Inevitable pedantry: his name is Leonardo, not &quot;da Vinci&quot;.<p>&quot;da&quot; means &quot;from&quot;, or in this sense &quot;of&quot;. So just as you might say &quot;Jesus of Nazareth&quot; you say &quot;Leonardo of Vinci&quot;.<p>You would never say something like &quot;...and Of Nazareth said...&quot;, so likewise it&#x27;s weird to say &quot;da Vinci invented...&quot;
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