Picture of Giovanni Cassini
Corbis-Bettmann
Giovanni Cassini
Giovanni Cassini was Italian-French astronomer who lived between 1625-1712. He discovered that Saturn's Rings are split into two parts, and today the gap between them is called the "Cassini Division". He also discovered four more moons of Saturn, in addition to those found by Huygens twenty years earlier.
Cassini studied hydrology at the Pope's request, and how to avoid the damaging floods that plaqued Europe. Unfortunately, his greatest mistakes were rejecting the Copernican model of the solar system and Newton's theory of universal gravitation.
Shop Windows to the Universe Science Store!
Our
online store includes fun
classroom activities for you and your students.
Issues of NESTA's quarterly journal, The Earth Scientist are also full of classroom activities on different topics in Earth and space science!
You might also be interested in:
What types of instructional experiences help K-8 students learn science with understanding? What do science educators teachers, teacher leaders, science specialists, professional development staff, curriculum designers, school administrators need to know to create and support such experiences?
...more
Christian Huygens was a Dutch physicist and astronomer who lived between 1629-1695. He found new methods for grinding and polishing lenses, making telescopes more powerful. Using a telescope he had made,
...more
Nicholas Copernicus was a Polish astronomer who lived between 1473-1543. He was born in Torun, Poland to a middle class family. He attended school at Cracow and eventually moved on to Italy where he received
...more
Isaac Newton was an English scientist and mathematician who lived between 1642-1727. He had one of the most brilliant minds the world has ever known. Legend has it that seeing an apple fall gave Newton
...more
The North and South Poles on Mars are similar to the polar regions on Earth in many ways. They are the coldest places on the planet, with wintertime temperatures dipping to a frigid -150° C (about -238°
...more
Charles Darwin was an English Naturalist who lived between 1809-1882. In 1859, with the publication of The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, he challenged existing views on the appearance
...more
Christian Doppler was an Austrian mathematician who lived between 1803-1853. He is known for the principle he first proposed in Concerning the coloured light of double stars in 1842. This principle is
...more
Ben Franklin was an American scientist and statesman who lived between 1706-1790. At a time when little was known about electricity, he carried out many experiments to learn of its dangers and possible
...more
