Sir Isaac Newton
By: Christopher Nigido
College Now Course - SCI 1
In Professor Valente's science class we viewed a biographical film on Sir Isaac Newton.
The film contained information on the story of his life, his accomplishments, his
adversity, and the contribution that Sir Isaac Newton made to the fields of science
and mathematics.
Sir Isaac Newton was born in a manor house near Grantham, Lincolnshire, England, on
January 4, 1643. Newton's father passed on a few months before Newton was born, and
when his mother remarried, was left in the care of his grandmother. Newton went to
grammar school in Grantham, but was taken out when his stepfather died due to the
fact his mother wanted him to manage her finances. But, Newton had that love for learning
math and the sciences. Because of this his family decided to enroll him into Trinity
College at Cambridge in June of 1661. It was not until the plague closed Cambridge
in the summer of 1665 that Newton's scientific genius emerged. During the 18 months
after that summer Newton made revolutionary advances in science, math and astronomy.
Newton is known for his work in Optics, Calculus and the concept of Gravity. Newton's
work in Optics shows that he discovered the fact that white light is really a mixture
of all the colors. He experimented with a prism to prove this in that he took a prism
and shone white light through it and on the wall was the rainbow of colors. Newton
used this information to build a reflecting telescope to overcome distortions of chromatic
dispersion. In 1671 he donated a telescope to the Royal Society of London. Late in
1672 he published his first research paper on his new theory of light and color. This
is when he first had a problem with his nemesis, Robert Hooke. After Hooke died in
1703, Newton published the book Opticks, the book dealt with his further research
on light.
Newton is credited by some for inventing calculus. Newton's calculus enabled people
to use simple analytical methods to deal with problems such as finding areas, tangents,
the lengths of curves, and their maxima and minima. Newton could not fully justify
calculus, but he still receives credit for developing this powerful mathematical tool.
Newton is best known for his work in physics. He developed the concept of gravity,
the three laws of motion, and also the law of centrifugal force. Newton published
the book, Principia, in 1687, which outlined his work and research on these topics.
There is a myth that the concept of gravity fell on Newton in the form of an apple
hitting him as he sat under an apple tree. While this may or may not be true, the
concept of the law of universal gravitation was invented by Newton. Newton is also
credited with discovering the three laws of motion:
Newton's First Law of Motion:
I. Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion
unless an external force is applied to it.
Newton's Second Law of Motion:
II. The relationship between an object's mass,m, its acceleration a, and the applied force, F, is F = ma. Acceleration and force are vectos (as indicated by their symbols being displayed
in slant bold font); in this law the direction of the force vector is the same as
the direction of the acceleration vector.
Newton's Third Law of Motion:
III. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Newton also used his laws of motion to try and understand the concept of centrifugal
force.
After the publishing of Principia, Newton was credited as being the greatest philosopher
of his time. Newton suffered a mental breakdown in 1693. In 1699 he was appointed
master of the Royal Mint. In 1703 he was elected president of the Royal Society and
he was knighted in 1708. He died on March 31, 1727.
