physics

= **Physics: The Discoveries of Isaac Newton** =

Group members: Chng Hui Yie, Claudia Cheng, Jolyn Khoo, Kimberley Yeo, Phua Shi Ying (305)

Many events led up to the Scientific Revolution which changed the way people viewed science and based facts on hard evidence instead of flawed logic. The Newtonian Revolution was one of the many factors that gave rise to the Scientific Revolution. Although his laws were later corrected by Albert Einstein and other scientists, it is testimony to his genius that even after nearly three centuries, his influence continues to be felt.

** Timeline of Key Events **
 __Timeline__
 * -1642- Birth of Isaac newton
 * -1664- Was elected a scholar of trinity college
 * -1665- Gained his bachelor of arts, generalised the binomial theorem, conducted prism experiments, proposed three laws of motion (plague, returned to Woolsthorpe)
 * -1666- Discovers the spectrum of light, devised “ method of fluxions” (calculus), inaugurated on the law of universal gravitation (plague)
 * -1667- Was elected a fellow of trinity college, returned from Woolsthorpe
 * -1668- Built first reflecting telescope, formulated law of cooling, studied speed of sound
 * -1669- Replaced Isaac barrow whom retired as Lucasian Professor of mathematics
 * -1671- Presented reflecting telescope to the royal society of London
 * -1672- Elected as a fellow of the royal society
 * -1672- Presented his results on optics to the royal society hooke made some critical remarks on it
 * -1675- Wrote a hypothesis explaining the properties of light, hooke claimed that newton stole his ideas
 * -1679- Returned to his work on mechanics, found mathematical proof of elliptical orbit
 * -1684- Mislaid papers on elliptical orbit, wrote it out again and presented it as a scientific article called //De motum corporum in gyrum// ("on the motion of revolving bodies")
 * -1686- Presented principia to royal society, hooke claimed that newton obtained the inverse square law from him
 * -1687- Principia was published
 * -1689- Was appointed as member of parliament for Cambridge university
 * -1693- Suffered a mental breakdown
 * -1696- Was appointed warden of the royal mint
 * -1699- Became master of the mint
 * -1703- Was elected president of the royal society
 * -1704- Accepted post, published Opticks
 * -1705- Knighted by queen anne
 * -1713- Second edition of principia published
 * -1726- Third edition of principia published
 * -1727- Death of Isaac newton
 * -1693- Suffered a mental breakdown
 * -1696- Was appointed warden of the royal mint
 * -1699- Became master of the mint
 * -1703- Was elected president of the royal society
 * -1704- Accepted post, published Opticks
 * -1705- Knighted by queen anne
 * -1713- Second edition of principia published
 * -1726- Third edition of principia published
 * -1727- Death of Isaac newton
 * -1713- Second edition of principia published
 * -1726- Third edition of principia published
 * -1727- Death of Isaac newton
 * -1726- Third edition of principia published
 * -1727- Death of Isaac newton
 * -1727- Death of Isaac newton

** Isaac Newton **
Isaac Newton was born on 4 January 1643, and died on 31 March 1727 at the age of 84. He was considered by many scholars and members of the general public to be one of the most influential men in human history.

Newton was a deeply introverted character and fiercely protective of his privacy, especially in his earlier years. Even in his maturity, having become rich, famous, laden with honours and internationally acclaimed as one of the world's foremost thinkers, he remained deeply insecure, given to fits of depression and outbursts of violent temper, and implacable in pursuit of anyone by whom he felt threatened. Yet he was also capable of great generosity and kindness, and there is no lack of tributes to his affability and hospitality, at least in his later years.
 * Character**

Newton was born prematurely, three months after the death of his father, a prosperous framer also named Isaac Newton. H was a small child when he was born. His mother remarried when he was three, and he want to live with his maternal grandmother. There is no doubt that Isaac felt very bitter towards his mother and his step-father Barnabas Smith. When examining his sins at age nineteen, Isaac listed:-
 * Early Life**

//Threatening my father and mother Smith to burn them and the house over them.//

Basically treated as an orphan, Isaac did not have a happy childhood.

When he was approximately 12, Issac began attending the Free Grammar School in Grantham. However, he seems to have shown little promise in academic work. His school reports described him as 'idle' and 'inattentive'. As a result, he was taken away from school when he was 17 by his mother, to try his hand at farming. He didn't enjoy it, and he later returned to school to complete his education. Newton entered his uncle's old College, Trinity College Cambridge, on 5 June 1661.
 * Schooling**

Newton's aim at Cambridge was a law degree. However, Newton's interest in mathematics began in the autumn of 1663 when he bought an astrology book at a fair in Cambridge and found that he could not understand the mathematics in it. Attempting to read a trigonometry book, he found that he lacked knowledge of geometry and so decided to read Barrow's edition of Euclid's //Elements.// The first few results were so easy that he almost gave up but he:-
 * A Genius Surfacing**

...//changed his mind when he read that parallelograms upon the same base and between the same parallels are equal.//

Returning to the beginning, Newton read the whole book with a new respect. Following that, he read widely about other Mathematical theories, and it was then that his interest in Mathematics began to surface.

When the plague closed the University in the summer of 1665, he had to return to Lincolnshire. There, in a period of less than two years, while Newton was still under 25 years old, he began revolutionary advances in mathematics, optics, physics, and astronomy. It was during this period that his scientific genius emerged and he made several breakthrough theories.

Newton was also the first scientist ever to be knighted.

** Other People Involved **
 The Newtonian Revolution is not the result of Isaac Newton's sole efforts and instead a cumulation of the works of many others before him who influenced his thinking.

He read Rene Descartes' Principles of Philosophy which inspired him greatly and enabled him to advance much in his scientific thought. This would eventually lay the foundations of what was to come: his many ground breaking discoveries. However, it should be noted that Isaac Newton actually embraced Englishman Francis Bacon's Baconian method which is an early forerunner of the scientific method. Bacon emphasised that one must first observe something happen before attempting to explain how it happened. Rene Descartes felt that our five sense can be very deceiving and trick us, causing observation and experimentation to be unreliable. He decided that deduction and mathematical reasoning should be emphasised upon. Newton brought together these two perspectives by beginning with systematic observations and experiments, thereby deducing general concepts. The general concepts are then tested and verified by precise experiments and result in new deductions.

Newton also studied the works of German astronomer Johannes Kepler and Italian scientist Galileo Galilei. Both men were convinced Copernican's and firmly believed in the heliocentric model of the universe. They furthered the ideas of Copernicus and used mathematics to prove them. Galileo is also known for his telescopes and what he observed was strong evidence that the heliocentric model was correct.

English scientist Robert Boyle's scientific methods influenced Isaac Newton as well. The work of Robert Boyle directly led to the Scientific Revolution too as his experiments and their results formed a vital part of advancing scientific knowledge.

However Isaac Newton also ran into hiccups with separate disputes against the Royal Society's member Robert Hooke and German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz. Hooke criticised Newton in an article of Newton's on optics. Hooke accused Newton of stealing his ideas too.

** Major Discoveries &Achievements **
Sir Isaac Newton contributed substantially to the fields of physics and mathematics, synthesizing what was known, into a logically whole and consistent theoretical framework by using his laws of motion and theory of gravitation. He discovered many of the laws and theories that not only furthered our understanding of the [|universe], but also gave future scientists the tools to discover how to enter [|space]. He discovered gravitational force and established the three Universal Laws of Motion. This was huge in many ways as he proved definitively the [|heliocentric model] first proposed by [|Copernicus]. He also was the first to propose a set of laws that described the motion of all things in [|the universe]. This served as the basis for our understanding how the universe functions and why it is the way it is. Through invention of 'Infinitesimal Calculus', Newton also provided a mathematical framework which enabled the harnessing of these theoretical physics principles and prediction of greater results. One of Isaac Newton's inventions is the reflecting telescope, which was his entry card into the premier 'Royal Society of London'.
 * __ Isaac Newton's Discoveries in Theoretical Physics __**

The greatest of Newton's discoveries came when he experienced pristine solitude, in which he could meditate on his vague ideas and assimilate them together into a logically coherent whole. The principle that guided Newton's discoveries was simplicity. One of Isaac Newton's quotes, magnanimously proves the point:-

//Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.//

Isaac [|Newton's laws of motion] defined the concept of force. Newton's three laws of motion are as follows: These three laws together define the effect of force on objects and the framework of mechanics, through which allowed the analysing of the dynamics of forces and their effects.
 * Isaac Newton's Discoveries in Mechanics **
 * // Newton //// 's Law of Inertia: // Every object stays in its state of rest or uniform motion, unless disturbed by an external force.
 * // Newton //// 's Force Law // : The force acting on a body is defined as the rate of change of its linear momentum, with time.
 * // Newton //// 's Action-Reaction Law // : Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

While the three laws of motion define a type of mechanics, the Newton's law of gravitation defines the universal force of [|gravity]. The Newton's law of universal gravitation states that:-
 * Isaac Newton's Discovery of the Law of Gravitation **

// Every particle of matter attracts every other particle with a force along the straight line joining them and is directly proportional to their masses, while inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. //

Using this law and making extrapolations based on it, Newton derived Kepler's empirical laws of planetary motion his gravitational theory. Many people observed apples falling down before Newton, but none of them followed the broad generalization that it represented.

A gravitational force acts between two particles even though they are not in contact with each other. This concept of an action at a distance proved to be the undoing of Newton's theory later.

Newton's idea of gravitation serves well in understanding the motion of [|planets] and stars to incredible accuracy. People could understand the motion of planets and satellites and give it a rational explanation.

Newton was fascinated with the field of optics and he made many major discoveries in this field too. Some of Newton's discoveries in optics are:
 * Isaac Newton's Discoveries in Optics **
 * He discovered that white light is composed of component color wavelengths and demonstrated this with the use of a prism. He discovered many properties of the light and colors.
 * He predicted the dispersion and aberration of light in telescopes and suggested remedies to correct the same. In the process, he invented a new kind of telescope. Newton promoted the concept of a universal ether through which the light propagates. This was later proved wrong by the special theory of relativity.
 * He also put forward the theory that light is made up of corpuscles, which was later proved wrong by Huygens' wave theory of light. However, the idea got a sort of new life when Einstein introduced light to be made of photons which are energy corpuscles. However, photons are far different from the corpuscles that Newton imagined. Nevertheless, he provided the impetus to new lines of thought.

** Importance and/or Significance **
To summarize, Newton revolutionized understanding of optics, physics and celestial mechanics. He also made important discoveries in Mathematics and Optics. Hence, it can be said that he made an outstanding contribution to the modernization of the Western Scientific world view, as his discoveries has been ranked among humanity's greatest achievements in abstract though.

Firstly, since astronomy was extremely important for navigation in Newton's era, Newton's discoveries helped improve navigation and his theories on the universe would be one of the earliest practical results of his ideas. Secondly, Sir Isaac Newton further developed and refined the method of observation and experiment that had already established itself in the seventeenth century, by carefully checking and rechecking his work and by creating experimental verifications of his various theories. This laid the path for more accurate scientific experimenting in time to come. Sir Isaac Newton also demonstrated that a comprehensive mechanical description of the world that explained matter and motion in terms of Mathematics was actually possible, and that complicated calculations were not necessarily correct. That was perhaps the greatest individual contribution to a rich and innovative period of scientific development.

Isaac Newton's three laws were important in a sense that they formed the basis for the science of mechanics, which underpinned the Industrial Revolution and the development of modern industry. All machines up till now are to be designed and operated with these three laws in mind. Hence, Newton's laws are of great significance and importance as they still apply in everyday activities.

Newton's Principia was recognized as a great feat of the human mind, and as the culmination of the work of Galileo and Kepler. Some 18th-century thinkers claimed that his Physics had eliminated God from the universe, except as a first cause, but Newton considered his findings to be an aid to religious belief.

** Bibliography **
__Websites__ [] [] [] [|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton's_reflector#cite_note-C3NV38tM0C_Page_168-6] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] http://salempress.com/store/samples/great_lives_from_history_seventeenth/great_lives_from_history_seventeenth_sir_isaac.htm http://www.newton.ac.uk/newtlife.html http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index:_ylt=AimXbcFqVVCU1zeARBJ1fXwazKIX:_Ylv=3?qid-20100204195921AASTtLH http://science.howstuffworks.com/sir-isaac-newton-info3.htm

__Books__ Newton in 90 minutes/ john and mary gribbin/ published in great britain 1997/ constable and company limited Science discoveries Isaac Newton and gravity/ steve parker/ published in great britain in 1993/ belitha press limited