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.
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