Quarter 4 Lesson 1:

OUR
EXPANDING
UNIVERSE:
HISTORICAL
CONCEPTS
AND OTHER
FACTS
Subject Instructor: SM Dahuya
HOW THE
ANCIENT
GREEKS
PROVED
EARTH WASN'T
FLAT
Ancient Greek Philosophers

Pythagoras (c. 570 Plato (c. 427 - c. 347 BC) Eudoxus (of Cnidus, 408 - Aristotle (384 -
- c. 495 BC) 355 BC) 322 BC)
celestial spheres being
Universe is crystalline and contains followed previous models the center of the
mathematical the moon, the Sun and Earth.
of the universe but
the stars added auxiliary spheres
Observations leading to the belief that the Earth is
round.
1. Observing lunar eclipses
• Earth’s shadow falls on the Moon
2. Simultaneously
measuring the
length of the
shadows cast by
identical poles
perpendicular to
a flat surface that
is tangential to
the earth's radius
at various, distant
locations.
Models of the Universe
Ptolemaic model
 Brahe’s PLANETARY MOTION

• Brahe believed in a
model of the Universe with
the Sun (rayed disk)
orbiting the Earth (black
dot), but the other planets
(symbols) orbiting the
Sun.
Tycho Brahe Tychonian Quadrant- an
instrument used to study and
observed the heavens.
Kepler PLANETARY MOTION

• About 20 years or so working with the data he got from Brahe,

the Three Laws of Planetary Motion were published in two
different years:
• (1) Law of Orbit/Ellipse (1609)
• (2) Law of Equal Areas (1609)
• (3) Law of Period or Harmony (1619)
•
1. Law of Orbit/Ellipse (1609)- : The orbit of each
planet about the Sun is an ellipse with the Sun at one
of the foci of the ellipse.
2. Law of Equal Areas - The line joining the Sun and the planet (called the
“radius vector”) sweeps over equal areas in equal times as the planet travels
around the orbit.