designing the teaching experiments and to Professor Names in Physics

Thorold Dickinsonfor advice and help on film

matters, Johannes Kepler
References
GREENHILL, L P, and CARPENTER, C R, 1959, Film
1511-1630
User, 13, 14-16.
JASPEN,N, 1950, Pennsylcania State
University
Instructional Film ResearchProgrammeTechnical
Report, SDC 269-7-1 7.
KENSHOLE, G E, 1966, Medical and Biological
Illustration, 16, 281.
-, 1968, Physics Education, 3, 49-50.
MCTAVISH, C L, 1949, Pennsylvania State Uniuersity D Andrew
Instrlrctional Film Research Programme Technical Bury Grammar School
Report, SDC 269-7-12. Lancashire
NELSON, H E, and VANDER MEER,A W, 1955,
Pennsylcania State Unicersity Instructional Film
Research Programme TechnicalReport,SDC 269-7-43. A scholarship to the University of Tuebingen in 1589
VAKDERMEER,A W, 1952, Pennsylcania State gave Johannes Kepler the essential opening to the
Unitersity Instructional Film Research Programme academic world that his active mind required.
Technical Report,SDC 269-7-28. One of the many new ideas he met, was that the
Sun not the Earth was the centre of the planetary
system. This idea, from the writings of Copernicus,
was part of the teaching given at the University by
Queries in physics Maestlin, the astronomer.In Maestlin,
Kepler
found a friend for life and the production of his first
Q.25 ( f r o m QIP 3) book, the Cosmographic Mystery owed a great deal
Can you supply the necessary geometrical informa- to Maestlin’s practical help.
tionabout the ECR 30 (or ECR 35) cathoderay ‘What caused the planets to move as they did?’
tubes, so that it can be used for ejm experiments? was the tremendous problem Kepler had set himself.
The answers he gave in the Mystery were more
A.25 ( f r o m QIP 3) visionary than scientific, for they depended on such
Both of these tubes are now obsolete;fromthe things as the five perfect solids and the harmonies of
Wireless World publication Radio Valce Data, 1956 music. Hiscelebrated ‘Laws of planetarymotion’
edition,page 74, the questionercan get the usual were the results of his search for a more accurate
electrical data but not the geometrical information description of the solar system, but the secrets they
required for a Thomson elm experiment. I would revealed seemed to confuse rather than clarify his
suggest that perhaps the only way to overcome this visions of the answer to his problem.
problem is toobtaintwo identical tubesandto The Mystery was written while Kepler, aged 26,
sacrifice one to obtain the necessary information to was teaching mathematics at a protestant school in
operate the other. Can anyone help here? Graz.He confidently expected it to have a great
impact and sent copies to manyleadingscholars,
All correspondence concerning QIP shouldbe sent to including Galileo, aged 33, and Tycho Brahe, aged
Mr WHJarvis,RoyalMasonicSchool for Boys, 51. Kepler’s contact with Tycho was to be much more
The Avenue, Bushey, Herts. fruitful than his meagre correspondence with Galileo.
Tycho was an eccentric, forceful character,an
aristocrat who enjoyed his authority over people and
an astronomer devoted to accurate measurement. In
1599 the catholic authorities closed Kepler’s school
and he was obliged to seek a new position. Tycho had
previously askedKepler to assist him and now
Kepler accepted. The two men met in February 160C
160
at Benatek, 22 miles from Prague. Tycho’s death in
October 1601 saw Kepler appointed to his position as
Imperial Mathematician to
Rudolph 11, and a
settled period of twelve years began. Kepler, to the
annoyance of Tycho’s heirs, acquired the books and
registers of observations, so meticulously recorded
by Tycho.
The outcome of Kepler’s work at Prague was two
texts on the science of light, and the New Astronomy,
published in 1609. Using Tycho’s observations,
together with his own, he was able to formulate a
better description of the solar system than had ever
been achieved before. The old astronomy had to go
and Kepler, during his work on Mars, made some
fruitful innovations, the most significant being that
he ceased to cling to uniform motion in a circle. He
knew that the speed of the planets was least when
they were farthest away from the Sun, and at the end
of months of lengthycalculationsbased on the
Earth‘s orbit, he found something which gave him a
constantfactor. His ‘Second law’, discovered in
1602, states :
A planet moves in such a manner that aline drawn
fromthe planet tothe Sun always sweeps out
equal areasin equal times.
Hissearch for the shape of the orbit, which he
believed to be egg shaped for atime, took himtwelve
months and six chapters of the book. The path of
progress was that of a man intoxicated by a wealth
of observations, laced with his own flights of fancy
and almostsoured by his mediocremathematics.
In fact, he wrote out a full description of the orbit
of Mars using the mathematics of an ellipse without
realizing that this simple conicsection fitted his
formulae. In modernterms, his ‘First law’ states :
The planetstravel aroundtheSunin elliptical
orbits, the Sun being at one of the foci.
In his introduction to the New Astronomy, Kepler
umbles about with some correct ideasof gravity and
later in thebookhe appreciates that an elliptical
orbit needs twoantagonistic forces. However, his
idea of the Sun being the prime mover remained that
of a wheel’s hub with vast spokes pushing the planets
around. His glimpses of the Newtonianuniverse were
flashes of sunlight throughthe cloudysky, which
persisted throughout his life. The publication of the
book, which was very difficult toread,had little
impact on thelearned world and hewas persuaded to
publish astandard text onCopernicanastronomy
which, after some dispute with religious authority,
appeared around 1620.
The year 1611 found Kepler in desperate straits;
his first wife and favourite child died; his Imperial
patron, ineffective and bankrupt, abdicated and died
a few months later, and civil war disruptedthe
country. In 1612 Kepler moved to Linz, as District
Mathematician, tostay for fourteenyears, though his
livelihood was continually threatened on account of
his moderate Lutheranism. His second wife proved
a happier match than his first, but his aged mother
got herself charged with witchcraft and hewas
concerned with the trialwhich dragged on foryears.
While at Linz, he published the Harmony of the
World which tookupagainthe visions of his
Cosmographic Mystery. It was an attempt to answer
more fully the question ‘why?’ Almost lost in the
preface to the fifth book of the Harmony was his
‘Third law’, which states:
The squares of the periods of revolution of the
planets are to one another as the cubes of their
mean distances from theSun.
This again was only a description, albeit correct,
but Kepler could see no reason behind it and he felt
happier with his harmonies and his solid figures
which tied the cosmos to music and mathematics.
To Kepler, the laws now linked perpetually with his
name seemed meaningless; to Newton, they were a
vital clue.
The compilation and printing of the Rudolphine
Tables of Astronomy occupied Kepler’s last years.
Good printing works were hard to find and, after
seeing one destroyed during thesiege of Linz in 1626,
Kepler travelled to Ulm to complete the printing in
September 1627. Wrangling with Tycho’s heirs,
which had dogged many of his works, delayed
publication for a furthersix months.
The famous Wallenstein, who had a great regard
for Kepler, more asan astrologer than an astronomer,
offered him a post in Sagan with a good salary and a
printing press. So in 1628, Kepler and his family
moved to Sagan, but he soon found himself a lonely
outcast with anti-Lutheran pressureagainbearing
down. In 1630 he set out for Linz on his own, but his
depression increased with the news that war threat-
ened Sagan and that Wallenstein had been dismissed.
He got no further than Ratisbon anddied of a fever
on 15th November.
Newton acknowledged that he was ableto see
further than others,only by standing on the shoulders
of giants. Oneof thegiants was Kepler.
Further reading
Armitage, A, 1966,John Kepler (London: Faber
and Faber).
Koestler, A, 1960, The Watershed, Abiography of
Johannes Kepler (London: Heinemann).
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