ARISTOTELIAN VS.

GALILEAN CONCEPTS
OF MOTION
 WORDS TO REMEMBER: ARISTOTELIAN
CONCEPTIONS 
• Motion is an object’s change in position with respect to
time.
 • Natural motion - an object will move and will eventually
return to its natural state depending on the composition that
the object is made of. An object made of material similar to
earth will return to earth or an object that is similar to air will
return to the air.
 WORDS TO REMEMBER: ARISTOTELIAN
CONCEPTIONS 
• Violent motion - an object will move if an external force
such as pushing or pulling is applied to it.
• Projectile motion - the motion of an object is parallel to the
ground until it is the object's time to fall back into the ground. 
• Impetus - a force or energy that permits an object to move. 
 ARISTOTELIAN CONCEPTIONS:
VERTICAL MOTION, HORIZONTAL
MOTION, AND PROJECTILE MOTION 

Aristotle is one of most influential Greek philosophers

whose ideas were the basis for many concepts that time. His
view on motion was based on his observations, which made
his ideas acceptable and stood for many years.
ARISTOTLE’S VIEW ON PROJECTILE MOTION

◦ Aristotle believed that the motion of

an object is parallel to the ground until
it is the object's time to fall back into
the ground.
◦ An impetus will be kept by the object
until such time that the initial force is
forgotten, and the object returns to its
natural state to stop moving and fall to
the ground.
KEYPOINTS:
1. According to Aristotle, motion can
either be a natural motion or a violent
motion.

2. An object will move and will

eventually return to its natural state
depending on the composition that the
object is made of. This referred as the
natural motion of an object.
KEYPOINTS: 3. An object will move if an external
force such as pushing or pulling is
applied to it. This is referred as the
violent motion of an object.

4. The motion of an object is parallel to

the ground until it is the object's time to
fall back into the ground. This is
referred as the projectile motion of an
object.
 WHY DO OBJECTS MOVE?

Scientists and philosophers alike have been trying to answer this

question even before 300 B.C. One of the well-known philosophers
who attempted to do this was Aristotle. His attempt was based on
inductive-deductive reasoning and was accepted for centuries.
However, Galileo Galilei challenged the Aristotelian view of
motion when he had his actual and thorough experiments. He
disagreed with most of Aristotle’s claims and provided his own
description of motion.
 GALILEAN CONCEPTIONS VS.
ARISTOTELIAN CONCEPTIONS
According to Aristotle, motion can be either natural or
violent motion. He also had his view on the projectile motion
of an object. He believed that an object thrown at a certain
angle is given an impetus. It will continue to move in such
state until the object’s impetus is lost, and the object returns
to its natural state, causing it to stop and fall to the ground.
 Galileo disproved Aristotle’s claims and believed
that the motion of objects is not simply due to the
composition of objects. He mentioned that motion
can be described by mathematics and the changes in
some physical variables such as time and distance. 
 Using his actual thorough experiments, he was able
to prove that:

1. an object in uniform motion will travel a distance

that is proportional to the time it will take to travel;
2. a uniformly accelerating object will travel at a speed
and proportional to some factor of time; and
3. an object in motion, if unimpeded, will continue to
be in motion; an external force is not necessary to
maintain the motion.
 WORDS TO REMEMBER: GALILEAN
CONCEPTIONS 

1. Horizontal Motion - an object in motion, if unimpeded,

will continue to be in motion, and an external force is not
necessary to maintain the motion. If the Earth’s surface is very
flat and extended infinitely, objects that are pushed will not be
impeded. Thus, objects will continue to move. .
 WORDS TO REMEMBER: GALILEAN
CONCEPTIONS 

2. Vertical Motion - in the absence of a resistance, objects

would fall not depending on their weight, but in the time of
fall. Also, if the object encountered a resistive force from a
fluid equal or greater than its weight, it will slow down and
reaches a uniform motion until it reaches the bottom and
stops. 
 WORDS TO REMEMBER: GALILEAN
CONCEPTIONS 

3. Projectile Motion - a projectile is a combination of

uniform motion in the horizontal direction and uniformly
accelerated motion in the vertical direction. If it is not
impeded, it will continue to move even without an applied
force.
KEYPOINTS:

Galileo believed that an object in uniform motion will travel a

distance that is proportional to the time it took to travel; a uniformly
accelerating object will travel with a speed proportional to some
factor of time; and an object in motion, if unimpeded, will continue
to be in motion; an external force is not necessary to maintain the
motion.

• Galileo believed that a projectile is a combination of uniform

motion in the horizontal direction and uniformly accelerated motion
 CONTRIBUTIONS OF
SCIENTIST TO OUR
UNDERSTANDING OF
MASS, MOMENTUM AND
ENERGY CONSERVATION
 PEOPLE WHO HAD
CONTRIBUTED TO THE
UNDERSTANDING OF MASS AND
ITS CONSERVATION
Ancient Greek Philosophers
◦believed that ‘nothing comes from
nothing’ which implied that
everything in the present had come
from an origin.
Nasir al-Din al-Tusi
◦was a Persian polymath who wrote that a body
of matter could not disappear completely. It
could only change its form, condition, and
other properties. These changes could turn it
into a different form of matter.
Mikhail Lomonosov
◦ was a Russian writer and polymath who disproved
the phlogiston theory, which assumed that matter
contained phlogiston— a fire-like substance that
existed in combustible materials. He showed in an
experiment of burning metals that the mass of
metals remained the same after burning.
Antoine Lavoisier
◦proposed the law of conservation of mass.
This law states that in a chemical reaction,
the total mass of the products is always equal
to the total mass of the reactants; and atoms
are neither created nor destroyed, but
rearranged to form new substances.
 SCIENTISTS WHO HAD
CONTRIBUTED TO THE
DEVELOPMENT OF THE LAW OF
CONSERVATION OF ENERGY
Galileo Galilei
◦ was an Italian astronomer and physicist who studied an
‘interrupted pendulum. His experiment showed that the
energy was conserved in the pendulum causing it to
swing to the same height as it was released. If energy
was not conserved, it would have stopped and have not
completed its swing. In a modern sense, he
demonstrated that kinetic energy can be converted to
potential energy and vice versa.
Christiaan Huygens
◦was a Dutch mathematician who published
his laws of collisions. He noted that the
kinetic energies of colliding objects were the
same before and after the collision.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
◦was a German polymath and philosopher
who used Huygen’s work on collision to
derive a mathematical formulation for
energy that is related to motion (kinetic
energy). It is called vis viva which is the
Latin word for ‘living force’ and represented
as mv2.
Émilie du Châtelet
◦ performed experiments where she dropped a ball
into soft clay at different heights. She learned that
the ball’s kinetic energy was proportional to the
square of its velocity, and the deformation on the
clay was proportional to its initial potential
energy. She then proposed that energy is different
from momentum.
Albert Einstein
◦developed a theory that united the concepts
of mass and energy. Einstein’s energy-mass
equivalence implies that neither mass nor
energy are separately conserved, but they
could be interchanged. The total ‘mass-
energy’ of the universe is conserved.
 SCIENTISTS WHO HAVE
CONTRIBUTED TO THE
DEVELOPMENT OF THE LAW OF
CONSERVATION OF MOMENTUM
Jean Buridan
◦was a teacher and philosopher who first used
the term ‘impetus’ to signify the notion of
momentum. According to his theory, an
impetus set an object in motion, and it
increases as the object’s speed also increases.
Rene Descartes
◦ was a French philosopher and mathematician who
proposed that the total ‘quantity of motion’ of the
universe is conserved and it is equal to the product of
the object’s size and speed. This is almost the same as
the modern concept of conservation of momentum,
however, Descartes had no concept of mass that was
different from weight and size of the object.
John Wallis
◦ was an English mathematician who suggested the
law of conservation of momentum. This law states
that a body will remain at rest or in motion, unless
an external force applied to it is greater than its
resistance. This statement is similar with the first
law of motion of Sir Isaac Newton.
Isaac Newton
◦was an English physicist and mathematician
who defined the ‘quantity of motion’ as a
product of velocity and mass and later
identified it as momentum. He implied that
when no force acts on the object, the
quantity of motion is conserved.
CONSERVATION OF
MOMENTUM
What is Momentum?
◦ Momentum is a measurement of mass in motion.
◦ It is usually given the symbol p.
◦ By definition, p=m⋅v​.
◦ Where m is the mass and v is the velocity.
◦ The standard units for momentum are kg⋅m/s and
momentum is always a vector quantity. 
When do we say that momentum was
conserved?
◦ In physics, the term conservation refers to something
which doesn't change.
◦ Momentum should have the same value both before and
after an event (collision between two objects).
Formula: P = mv

Total Momentum before collision = Total Momentum after collision

Mass x velocity of 2nd object

Mass x velocity of 1st object

Sample problem: 
What is the momentum of a child and wagon if the total mass
of the child and wagon is 22kg and the velocity is 1.5m/s?

Formula:
Solution:
P=mv

Given:
m=22 kg
P=mv
v=1.5 m/s P= 22kg * 1.5 m/s
P=?
P= 33 kg*m/s
Sample problem: 
The parking brake on a 1200kg automobile has
broken, and the vehicle has reached a momentum
of 7800kg.m/s. What is the velocity of the vehicle?
Formula:
Solution:
V=P/m

Given:
m=1,200 kg
V=P/m
v=? V=7,800 kg*m/s /1,200 kg
P=7,800
kg*m/s V= 6.5 m/s
Sample problem: 
 A 12,000kg. railroad car is traveling at 2m/s when it
strikes another 10,000kg.railroad car that is at rest. If
the cars lock together, what is the final speed of the two
railroad cars?
Formula: Solution:
P1=P2 * m2 =mass of both cars 12,000 + 10,000
m1v1=m2v2
p1 = p2
m1 v1 = m2 v2
Given:
(12,000 kg) (2 m/s)  = (22,000 kg)  v2         
m1=12,000 kg
V1= 2 m/s
24,000 kg*m/s = 22,000 kg  (v2)
m2= 22,000 kg 24,000/22,000 = v2
v2= ? v2 = 1.1m/s