Science

What do helicopters, submarines, speech and anatomy have in common? Leonardo thought about or worked with each one in his life. Most people first associate Leonardo with art, but in reality he did the same, if not more work, with science and engineering. His interest came from his mentor, Andrea del Verrocchio, who was also blessed with a love of learning.

Leonardo was an exceptional thinker and wanted to know about everything and how it worked. All his studies are still visible in his thousands of pages of notes and drawings.

Leonardo dug up graves to obtain cadavers for his exploration of anatomy. He made little paper models of his inventions (such as the flying machine) to see if they worked.

Believe it or not, some of Leonardo's works did fly! His idea of flooding battle fields as a war tactic was developed for Duke Ludovico Sforza. Even though the Duke never used it, the Dutch used it against the French with success in 1672. Because of the Duke, many of da Vinci's ideas were related to war. These include shrapnel, gas bombs and tanks among others.

Come along and look at some of these sketches and see what we and others have to say about them...