Questions on the Second Day of Galileo's Dialogue:

1.  On p. 141 (bottom) Simplicio (the representative of Aristotle) 
adduces the experiment of dropping a stone from the top of a ship's 
mast as part of an Aristotelian argument against the motion of the 
earth (involving a rock "grazing the tower" from which it is dropped 
as on the previous page).  How is the ship experiment supposed to 
apply against the motion of the earth (see Salviati's speech at the 
top of p. 126)? 

2.  Immediately following Simplicio's speech on p. 141 Salviati (the 
representative of Galileo) gives a reply.  What is Salviati's reply? 
How does Salviati here think that the experiment on the ship bears on 
the question of the earth's rotation? 

3.  On p. 144 Salviati asks Simplicio whether he has ever performed 
the experiment on the ship.  What is Simplicio's reply?  What does 
Salviati now predict about the experiment on the ship?  How does this 
prediction connect with what Salviati said in 2 above?

4.  Has Salviati himself made the experiment to verify his 
prediction?  What does he say about this on p. 145?

5.  On pp. 145-7 Salviati considers a polished uniform plane on which 
a movable body may be placed.  How will it move if the plane is 
tilted downwards?  What will happen if the body is pushed (given an 
"impetus") in the upward direction?

6.  On p. 147 we now consider a plane tilted neither upwards nor 
downwards.  What will happen if a movable body is placed on it?  What 
will happen if it is pushed (given an "impetus") in any direction?

7.  On p. 148 we consider the plane titled neither upwards nor 
downwards again.  What kind of surface will this be?  Is it really a 
"plane"?  What does the shape of this surface have to do with the 
tendency of heavy bodies to move towards the center of the earth?

8.  On pp. 148-9 we then return to the example of the ship.  How do 
our preceding considerations apply to this example?  How will a rock 
dropped from the mast actually move?  How does its motion get 
separated into two independent components, as in Salviati's speech on 
p. 149?  What are these two components, and how do they relate to the 
motions in a plane considered in 5 - 7 above?

9.  On p. 186, second paragraph, Salviati embarks on a long 
discussion of what would happen if one is shut up in a cabin on a 
ship.  How does this discussion relate to our previous consideration 
of the motion of the ship?  How does it relate to our original 
problem of the motion of the earth? -See the analogous speech of 
Salviati on p. 171.

10.  On p. 188, immediately after the above discussion of the cabin 
of a ship, Sagredo (the "neutral wise man") notes its application to 
the motion of the earth, but then raises a further objection to the 
rotation of the earth based on the "property of extruding and 
discarding material adhering to the revolving frame" (and consider 
the parallel objection concerning "circular motion" on p. 132).  What 
exactly is this objection?  How is it different from the objection 
based on projectiles and falling bodies?  Does Galileo's reply to 
these old objections (as developed above) also apply to this new 
objection?  Why or why not?