Each week the Evidence assignments will be listed on a page like this. This first week, a Stonehenge assignment subsitutes for the usual Context assignment; and a Shape of the Earth assignment substitutes for the usual Evidence assignment. Hint: You may want to print this page and keep the questions below in front of you to answer them as you complete
the assigned readings.
I hope you enjoy watching the video for this story half as much as I enjoyed making it!
T
or F? A famous
woodcut of a medieval figure gazing beyond the heavens provides evidence
of medieval belief in a flat Earth.
-
T
or F? The Pythagoreans
argued that the Earth is a sphere because the sphere is the most beautiful
shape.
-
T
or F? The Pythagoreans
argued that the Earth is a sphere because of an analogy between the macrocosm
(universe) and microcosm (Earth).
-
T
or F? Aristotle’s
theory of gravity required the Earth to be flat.
-
T
or F? Lunar
eclipses prove that the Earth is a sphere.
-
T
or F? Roman
writers such as Cicero and Pliny believed the Earth is flat.
-
T
or F? Catholic
theologians such as Augustine and Aquinas believed the Earth is flat.
-
T
or F? Belief
in a spherical Earth was considered heresy by popes in the middle ages.
-
T
or F? Medieval
natural philosophers such as William of Ockham and Nicole Oresme believed
the Earth is flat.
-
T
or F? Columbus
argued that he could sail around the world against Spanish Inquisitors who
thought the Earth was flat.
-
T
or F? Circumpolar
stars may dip below the horizon as they make their daily circle around the
north star.
-
T
or F? The ancient
Librarian of Alexandria, Eratosthenes, accurately determined the circumference
of the Earth.
-
T
or F? The necessity
for the International Date Line was not recognized until the journeys of
Columbus and later voyagers.
-
T
or F? Stars
appear to rise in the east , turn overhead, and set in the west just as
if they were fixed to the inside of a giant celestial sphere.
-
T
or F? Fixed
stars appear to move in circles around the Earth at a constant distance
from the north pole or from the celestial equator.
-
T
or F? Belief
in a spherical Earth was suppressed by kings in the middle ages.
-
T
or F? The existence
of time zones confirms that the surface of the Earth is curved from east
to west.
-
T
or F? The change
of visible circumpolar stars confirms that the surface of the Earth is curved
from north to south.
-
T
or F? Medieval
writers of literature such as Dante and Chaucer believed the Earth is flat.
-
T
or F? Ancient
Greeks from Plato to Aristotle to Ptolemy thought the Earth is flat.
