Elegance In Science

Ian Glynn, Multco Central, 501 G568e 2010

Clever reasoning and design of experiments, mostly.

• p30 Kepler realizes that Mars has a 687.1 day orbital period, and combs through Tycho's measurements of Mars to find observations that are close to 687.1 days apart, using that position as a fixed reference point (and the fixed stars) to determined the orbit of the Earth. With the Earth's orbit determined precisely, he precisely determined the orbits of Mars and other planets.

• p31 First law ellipse made Kepler uncomfortable, second law angular momentum, third law period T^{2 = Semi}3

The rest is mildly amusing, I did not read the entire book.