# Lesson 5: Motion, Getting From Here to There
> Galileo Galilei lived a long and tempestuous life. When he began his work as a mathematician, the world was a place of magic and superstition. An object moved according to mysterious rules, fast or slow, whether straight or curved vaguely according to its Nature, its fire-air-water-earth composition. Explaining, much less predicting, how things moved wasn't even a serious question. Philosophers owned that subject and their thinking was rigid and unimaginative. By the time he died, ill and blind at the age of 77, Galileo had established our modern relationship with Nature. His scientific descendants no longer wondered *whether* the world was knowable and regular. Their research program became---and is now--- *what are the precise mathematical rules* that describe the motions---of all things. Vagueness became unwelcome. Precision was the game.
Modeling motion was the beginning of physics and this lesson tells that story.
This lesson is a little more...deliberate than the others will be. We have some language to get straight. I need for you to become familiar with the "rules of engagement" in the material. If you proceed carefully, you'll be in a good position to take the rest of QS&BB in stride. Also, I think Galileo was pretty neat.
```{admonition} Goals of this lesson:
Understanding, Appreciation, and Familiarity
```
I'd like you to Understand:
- How to calculate distance, time, and speed for uniform and constantly accelerated linear motion
- That falling objects all have the same acceleration near the Earth
- How to graph simple motion parameters
- That physics models the ideal regularities of nature
I'd like you to Appreciate:
- The algebraic narratives in the development of the formulas
- The shape of the trajectory of a projectile
- That a projectile’s motion is made of two components with different accelerations
I'd like you to become Familiar With:
- Ideas of motion before Galileo
- Some of Galileo’s life
- Galileo’s experiments with motion