In the classroom story of Sir Isaac Newton, the apple gets all of the hype. Everybody loves the tale of Isaac chilling under a tree when an apple bonks him on the nog.. and he has the “aha” moment and instantly produces his law of gravitation. Well.. history tells us that it was another falling object likely influenced him more.
Sir Isaac Newton was without a doubt one of the most influential scientists of all time. His contributions to our understanding of physics, gravity, astronomy, optics, and calculus remain a cornerstone to understanding our physical world today.
Newton was born on Christmas day 1642 in rural England. Three months before his birth his father died. His mother eventually remarried when Isaac was three years old, leaving Newton to live with her new husband. Isaac was left to be raised by his maternal grandmother. Newton excelled in primary school until his then twice-widowed mother returned to pull him out of school in 1659, forcing him out in an attempt to make him a farmer. Isaac hated farming and eventually made his way back to school, graduating at the top of his class.
In 1661 Isaac entered university at Cambridge. In order to pay for his education Newton acted as a valet during his early years at Cambridge. He received a scholarship in 1664 and earned his BA a year later. In 1665 the school temporarily closed due to an outbreak of the plague. Newton went home and conducted experiments that would be the genesis for calculus, optics, and gravitation. Newton returned to Cambridge in 1667 earning his Masters’ degree. During the next 20+ years he illuminated so many fields that we will have to focus on his most iconic.
Gravity, Physics, and Astronomy: After a revolutionary two years uncovering the properties of light and color, he began working on the role of gravity in the orbit of planets in 1679. He looked back to work of Galileo, Descartes, and Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.
Kepler’s Law’s: Ok… long story short, 50 years before Newton’s “law of gravity,” Johannes Kepler observed some principles of orbiting planets. He observed the orbits were predictable circular shapes called ellipses (1st Law). He noticed that orbiting planets speed up and slow down as they orbit (2nd Law).Kepler’s observations were just that… “observations.” There was no explanation for why planets orbited in an ellipses until Newton came along.
That’s when a falling object helped to change the history of scientific discovery. In 1680 an epic comet was observed worldwide. This was no regular comet, as it was visible in both the night and day and happened to be the first comet ever discovered using a telescope. It was first observed in November of 1680, disappeared, then suddenly reappeared in December of the same year. The comet was visible all the way through March of 1681.
At first Newton thought there had been two comets. In reality, the comet had disappeared because it was orbiting the sun and couldn’t be seen. At the time Newton (and everyone else) thought comets only traveled in straight paths. Newton studied the comet’s path and figured out that the sun’s gravitation was pulling the smaller comet in a curve around the sun. He realized the same thing was happening as the earth orbited around the sun. The smaller earth is being pulled by the sun’s gravitational force, causing the earth’s orbit to curve.
Newton’s comet contributed to Newton’s law of gravity. The law states that every object in the universe attracts every other object with a force proportional to its mass. Larger mass = greater gravitational pull. The law also states that the further away two object are, the weaker their gravitational pull will be. He used his observations to create the equation below, that can be used to calculate the gravitational force of two objects. Using this, he could explain planet and comet orbits.
Newton’s research on these topics was first published in 1684, and then in his famous principa which was published on July 5th 1687. In the principa he described his now famous 3 laws of motion.
Law #1: An object at rest tends to stay at rest, while an object in motion tends to stay in motion.
Law #2: F = ma (Basically the mass of an object affects the amount of force needed for it to move/accelerate).
Law #3: When object X exerts a force on object Y, object Y exerts an equal and opposite force on X.
In the principa he also described the role of gravity between objects. He used the Latin word gravitas (weight) to describe the laws of gravity we still use today. This epic publication would send shock-waves throughout the science world. K = 5 His work put-to-bed any opposition to the heliocentric theory, that the earth and other planets are orbiting the sun. His wide-ranging and undeniably groundbreaking work predicted the path of comets, the moon, and even introduced calculus. The principa was an enormous triumph, and Newton gained international fame.
In 1696 Newton began working for the Royal Mint in London, and became the “master of the mint” in 1699, working to reform the currency and target counterfeit operations, successfully prosecuting 28 counterfeiters. In 1703 Isaac became the president of the Royal Society of sciences and was knighted by Queen Anne two years later. Newton died in March of 1727 and is now buried in Westminster Abbey next to the famous evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin.
Sooo… What about the famous Apple incident? Well history suggests that although the comical head-donk incident may not have occurred, Newton himself often referenced the incident, and some version of it likely took place. Newton wondered when the apple falls to the ground, why does it always fall straight down? Why not at an angle? Newton’s observation and mathematical discoveries revealed that the lighter object(apple) was simply attracted to the strong gravitational pull of the larger object(the center of the earth).
NAB CD.EFG W105 HJ.KLM
A = The number of months before Newton’s birth that his father died.
B = Newton became the master of the mint in 169__
C = Cambridge closed to avoid Yersinia pestis in 166__
D =
E = Isaac earned his Master’s degree in 166__
F = Newton became president of the Royal Society in 170__
G =
H = The law that objects in motion usually stay in motion
J = The great comet was first spotted in 168__
K =
L = The most likely number of times an apple fell on Newton’s head.
M = The law that objects with more mass require more force to move.
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