Galileo’s Laboratory

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) watched nature carefully, asking questions, testing ideas, all the while convinced that the world was full of hidden patterns waiting to be discovered.  In this unit, students step into Galileo’s workshop and join him in that search for patterns.  They will investigate questions that seem simple at first: Why does a coin fall into a cup when a card is pulled away?  Why does a passenger keep moving when a cart suddenly stops?  Do heavy objects fall faster than light ones?  Why do pendulums swing the way they do?  These are the kinds of ordinary observations that captured Galileo’s attention and led him toward surprising discoveries.

Rather than simply reading about Galileo’s conclusions, students will recreate many of the investigations that inspired them.  They will perform demonstrations, conduct experiments, collect observations, compare results, and test competing explanations.  Along the way, they will practice the same scientific method that Galileo championed: Ask, Guess, Test, Learn.  As they work through each challenge, they will discover that science is not merely a collection of facts, but a way of investigating the world and uncovering its hidden order.

By the end of the unit, students will have explored some of the foundational ideas behind motion.  More importantly, they will gain experience thinking the way Galileo thought.  They will learn to look at familiar things—a grocery cart, a swinging weight, a falling coin—and recognize that even ordinary events can contain deep mysteries.  Galileo believed that nature was like a great book written in a language that could be learned.  This unit invites students to begin reading a few pages of that book for themselves.