A portrait of Nicolaus Copernicus from the early 16th century. Image courtesy http://wikipedia.org

Nicolaus Copernicus is known as the Father of Modern Astronomy. His idea that the earth revolves around the sun was not very popular, but it was very important. He was called a “fool” by church leaders, but they did not know that God made the solar system to revolve around the sun.

Copernicus was born February 19, 1473 in Torun, Poland. He was the youngest of four children. His father was a copper trader and his mother was an aristocrat. When his father died, his uncle became a father figure to him.

He was a very educated man. Copernicus studied canon law and medicine but his uncle hoped he would become a bishop in the church. Both of their plans changed when he met da Ferrara, a famous astronomer.  He became his assistant. He continued his studies in medicine and canon and received his doctorate degree in 1503.

The heliocentric model of the solar system which appeared in Copernicus' book, "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" Image courtesy http://wikipedia.org

When he returned home after studying abroad, he worked in the church, practiced medicine and studied astronomy. He began to question the idea of his day, that the earth was the center of the universe. He calculated a theory that the earth actually revolves around the sun. He could not prove it. Telescopes would not be invented until fifty years after he died. He also believed that the earth rotates on an axis and that it affects the star patterns we see.

His ideas were not very popular in the church. They thought Scripture said the earth is the center and they thought he was a heretic. John Calvin and Martin Luther, leaders of the Reformation, wrote mean things about him, calling him a fool. But he stuck to his answer and believed he was right. Today we know that he was.

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He said, “It was one of the quiet, colorful afternoons of sheer beauty which we have in October in New England, and as I looked toward the fields at the east, I imagined how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars, and how it would look on a small scale, if sent up from the meadow at my feet.”

He was trying to make a rocket because a airplane couldn’t fly without gravity.  He took apart Chinese fireworks. They were powered by gunpowder, but gunpowder wouldn’t work for the rocket, because the rocket needed a strong steady push to keep it going. Finally he decided to use liquid oxygen and hydrogen. But fuel was hard to get because liquid oxygen had to be stored at -297′ F and hydrogen at -423′ F.

His first successful rocket was 10 1/2 feet tall and weighed 10 pounds. It was launched in 1926. His assistant lit the fuel with a blow torch. It went 41 feet high. The first flight lasted only 2.5 seconds but the space age had begun. He died in 1945 and never sent a rocket to space but but the Russian satellite Sputnik in 1957 and the American satellite Explorer in 1958 were descendants of Goddard’s rocket.

Here is how to make a a model liquid fueled rocket:You need :

• An empty wine bottle and cork
• baking soda
• tissue paper
• vinegar

What you do:

1. You take the wine bottle and put a half cup of vinegar in it.
2. Then you take it outside roll up a teaspoon of baking soda in the tissue paper.
3. Drop the packet of baking soda in the bottle and quickly stick in the cork; wait awhile;  the cork will fly through the air.

Submitted by The Swordmaster