Galileo Galilei:

Opening Eyes to an Undiscovered

World

Shannon Hendrick, Daniel Bettino and Nan

Carpenter
Group Website
Senior Division
Process Paper Word Count: 481
As a group, we found that we all shared a common
interest in astronomy. After searching our minds and ours

textbooks for where we could go with this commonality,

we soon decided on Galileo. It seemed as though he fit
the theme perfectly, as we had already been learning
about him earlier this year. With Galileo's discoveries of
Callisto, Io, Ganymede and Europa, he has opened
peoples eyes to a world beyond what we knew existed.
Galileo Galilei is a distinguished astronomer, whose
discoveries and ideas are well documented and
extensive. We happened to get lucky, realizing that he
put all of his findings into drawings and books, which
made it easier to quickly learn about the topic. We were
also able to find many secondary sources which
described what he did, and how he accomplished his
discoveries. However, when gathering information about
the Galilean Moons for our project, it was difficult to find
new information which we had not previously collected.
Therefore, it was necessary for our group to find outside

sources, in which could supply us with different

information. To do this, we took on the task of emailing
experts, and talking a science teacher in our school.
Taking these extra steps allowed for us to further learn
about our topic, and get a better understanding of what
Galileo did, and why. As we began discover more, our
research having to do with his discoveries of the moon
extended into Galileo's difficulties with the church, and
how that affected his research.
With completing our research, it felt fitting to use a
website to display Galileo and his findings. Within our
research, there are many subtopics and using a website
makes it easy to organize because of the many taps and
ways to display different ideas. However, because we are
new to the website creator, weebly, we had some
troubles while in the process of making our site. Our first
aspect that we found difficult was making subsections for

our various topics. After trying to figure it out on our own,

we decided to talk to a expert on the site, going through
the weebly help center. They responded quickly after we
asked our questions, and our problem was resolved.
Galileo is considered one of the primary
extraterrestrial explorers of all history. He explored the
world outside ours, and discovered whole new concepts
along the way. He attempted to exchange these ideas
with the world around them, opening their eyes to the
truth. The people around him, however, were not all that
accepting of his ideas. There was a feeling of skepticism,
especially because Galileo had countered the lessons
they had learned for centuries before. Additionally, he
encountered many obstacles in his way to communicate,
foremostly the church. They stood in his way, refuting
each of his ideas, and suffocated his concepts. The truth
was very difficult to get out.