
Caltech engineers have discovered that Leonardo da Vinci’s understanding of gravity, although not entirely accurate, was ahead of his time by centuries. The researchers published an article in the journal Leonardo that explains how da Vinci had conducted experiments that showed gravity is a form of acceleration, and he modeled the gravitational constant to around 97 percent accuracy. Da Vinci was born in 1452 and died in 1519, and he explored these concepts long before other scientists like Galileo Galilei and Sir Isaac Newton. Da Vinci was limited by the tools available during his time, and he lacked a way to measure time accurately.
The experiments conducted by da Vinci were found by Mory Gharib, the Hans W. Liepmann Professor of Aeronautics and Medical Engineering, in the Codex Arundel, a collection of da Vinci’s papers covering science, art, and personal topics. Gharib noticed the sketches of triangles generated by sand-like particles pouring from a jar in the Codex Arundel while exploring da Vinci’s flow visualization techniques to teach graduate students in early 2017.
Da Vinci’s notes described an experiment in which a water pitcher would move along a straight path parallel to the ground, dumping water or a granular material (likely sand) along the way. Da Vinci’s notes explained that the water or sand would not fall at a constant velocity but rather would accelerate, and that the material stops accelerating horizontally because it is no longer influenced by the pitcher, and its acceleration is purely downward due to gravity. Da Vinci sought to mathematically describe the acceleration, and he modeled it as the falling object’s distance proportional to 2 to the t power, which is incorrect.
To explore da Vinci’s process, the researchers used computer modeling to run his water vase experiment. The team found that da Vinci used the wrong equation in the correct way. In his notes, da Vinci illustrated an object falling for up to four intervals of time, through which graphs of both types of equations line up closely. Gharib and his team didn’t know whether da Vinci performed more experiments or delved into this issue further, but they believe that the fact that he grappled with this problem in the early 1500s demonstrates how far ahead his thinking was.
Image Credits
In-Article Image Credits
Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man via Wikimedia Commons by Leonardo Da Vince with usage type - Public DomainFeatured Image Credit
Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man via Wikimedia Commons by Leonardo Da Vince with usage type - Public Domain