Abstract

Galileo’s Parabola describing the projectile motion passed through hands of all scholars of the classical mechanics. Therefore, it seems to be impossible to bring to this topic anything new. In our approach we will observe the Galileo’s Parabola from Pappus’ Directrix, Apollonius’ Pedal Curve (Line), Galileo’s Empty Focus, Newton’s Evolute, Leibniz’s Subtangent and Subnormal, Ptolemy’s Circle (Hodograph), and Dürer-Simon Parabola. For the description of events on this Galileo’s Parabola (this conic section parabola was discovered by Menaechmus) we will employ the interplay of the directrix of parabola discovered by Pappus of Alexandria, the pedal curve with the pedal point in the focus discovered by Apollonius of Perga (The Great Geometer), and the Galileo’s empty focus that plays an important function, too. We will study properties of this MAG Parabola with the aim to extract some hidden parameters behind that visible parabolic orbit in the Aristotelian World. For the visible Galileo’s Parabola in the Aristotelian World, there might be hidden curves in the Plato’s Realm behind the mechanism of that Parabola. The analysis of these curves could reveal to us hidden properties describing properties of that projectile motion. The parabolic path of the projectile motion can be described by six expressions of projectile speeds. In the Dürer-Simon’s Parabola we have determined tangential and normal accelerations with resulting acceleration g = 9.81 msec^-2 directing towards to Galileo’s empty focus for the projectile moving to the vertex of that Parabola. When the projectile moves away from the vertex the resulting acceleration g = 9.81 msec^-2 directs to the center of the Earth (the second focus of Galileo’s Parabola in the “infinity”). We have extracted some additional properties of Galileo’s Parabola. E.g., the Newtonian school correctly used the expression for “kinetic energy E = ½ mv² for parabolic orbits and paths, while the Leibnizian school correctly used the expression for “vis viva” E = mv² for hyperbolic orbits and paths. If we will insert the “vis viva” expression into the Soldner’s formula (1801) (e.g., Fengyi Huang in 2017), then we will get the right experimental value for the deflection of light on hyperbolic orbits. In the Plato’s Realm some other curves might be hidden and have been waiting for our future research. Have we found the Arriadne’s Thread leading out of the Labyrinth or are we still lost in the Labyrinth?

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