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Bored during Mass at the drafty cathedral
in Pisa, the seventeen-year-old Galileo noticed that the
chandelier overhead took as many beats to complete an arc
when hardly moving as when it was swinging widely. Galileo's
Pendulum tells the story of what this observation meant,
and of its profound consequences for modern science and
technology.
The principle behind the pendulum's swing
-- a property called isochronism -- marks a simple yet fundamental
system in nature, one that ties the rhythm of time to the
very existence of matter in the universe. Roger Newton begins
with a look at biorhythms in living organisms and at early
calendars and clocks -- contrivances of nature and culture
that, however adequate in their time, did not meet the precise
requirements of seventeenth-century science and navigation.
Galileo's Pendulum recounts the history of the newly
evolving time pieces -- from marine chronometers to atomic
clocks -- based on the pendulum, as well as other mechanisms
employing the same physical principles, and explains the
Newtonian science underlying their function. The book ranges
nimbly from the sciences of sound and light to the astonishing
intersection of the pendulum's oscillations and quantum
theory, resulting in new insight into the make-up of the
material universe. Covering topics from the invention of
time zones to Isaac Newton's equations of motion, from Pythagoras'
theory of musical harmony to Michael Faraday's field theory
and the development of quantum electrodynamics, Galileo's
Pendulum is an authoritative and engaging tour through
time of the most basic all-pervading system in the world.
Roger G. Newton is Distinguished Professor
Emeritus of Physics, Indiana University. He is the author
of many books, including The Truth of Science: Physical
Theories and Reality and What Makes Nature Tick?
(both from Harvard).
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