Some information about achievements of Sir Isaac Newton
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Answer:
Explanation:
Newton’s Three Laws of Motion:
For starters, his magnum opus – y”), which was first published in 1687 – laid the foundations for classical mechanics. In it, he formulated his Three Laws of Motion, which were derived from Johann Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion and his own mathematical description of gravity.
William Blake's Newton (1795), depicted as a divine geometer. Image Credit: William Blake Archive/Wikipedia
William Blake’s Newton (1795), depicting him as a divine geometer. Image Credit: William Blake Archive/Wikipedia
The first law, known as the “law of inertia”, states that: “An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted on by an unbalanced force. An object in motion continues in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.” The second law states that acceleration is produced when a force acts on a mass – ergo, the greater the mass of the object, the greater the force required to accelerate it. The third and final law states that “for every action, there is an equal but opposite reaction”.
Universal Gravitation:
He also formulated his law of Universal Gravitation in the Principia, which states that every point mass attracts every single other point mass by a force pointing along the line intersecting both point. According to his calculations, this force is proportional to the product of the two masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. The formula for this theory can be expressed as:
F = G frac{m_1 m_2}{r^2}
Newton would go on to use these principles to account for the trajectories of comets, the tides, the precession of the equinoxes, and other astrophysical phenomena. This effectively removed the last doubts about the validity of the heliocentric model of the cosmos which argued that the Sun (not the Earth) was at the center of the planetary system. His work also demonstrated that the motion of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies could be described by the same principles.
Sapling of the reputed original tree that inspired Sir Isaac Newton to consider gravitation. Credit: Wikipedia Commons/Loodog
Sapling of the reputed original tree that inspired Sir Isaac Newton to consider gravitation. Credit: Wikipedia Commons/Loodog
Though Newton’s inspiration for his theories on gravity are often attributed to the “Apple Incident” – i.e. where he watched an apple fall from a tree – the story is considered apocryphal by modern sources who argue that he came to his conclusions over time. However, Newton himself described the incident, and contemporaries of his defend this assertion.
Shape of the Earth:
Additional contributions include his prediction that the Earth was likely shaped as an “oblate spheroid” – i.e. a sphere that experienced flattening at the poles. This theory would later be vindicated by the measurements of Maupertuis, La Condamine, and others. This in turn helped convince most Continental European scientists of the superiority of Newtonian mechanics over the earlier system of Descartes.
In terms of mathematics, he contributed to the study of power series, generalized the binomial theorem to non-integer exponents, developed Newton’s method for approximating the roots of a function, and classified most of the cubic plane curves. He also shares credit with Gottfried Leibniz for the development of calculus.
These discoveries represented a huge leap forward for the fields of math, physics, and astronomy, allowing for calculations that more accurately modeled the behavior of the universe than ever before.
Optics:
In 1666, Newton began contributing to the field of optics, first by observing that color was a property of light by measuring it through a prism. From 1670 to 1672, he lectured at the University of Cambridge on optics and investigated the refraction of light, demonstrating that the multicolored spectrum produced by a prism could be recomposed into white light by a lens and a second prism.