Sir Isaac Newton PRS MP

Sir Isaac Newton PRS MP

Doug Heymann

    Sir Isaac Newton PRS MP (Dec 25, 1642 - Mar 20, 1726) was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist and theologian widely known around the world as an important character at the time of the scientific revolution and one of the most influential scientists ever. Newton is known for much of his work having to do with the basis of standard mechanics, optics, laws of motion and universal gravitation, and the invention of the world-wide use of the math called calculus. He came about much progress that is used in modern day and proves his work in these areas such as a prism and telescope, different universal formulas, laws of motion and universal gravitation, and standard mechanics. Newton is a hero to myself and all because his work advanced the public view of how things worked in the world and moved people passed just thinking that the world worked because it did. He his a hero to me because in the near future when I get into highschool, I get to learn all about his works in the area of calculus and think just like he did back in the day. 

Sir Isaac Newton

Principia
Mathematica

When people, including myself, think of Isaac Newton without much background knowledge, our first thought tends to be that he created some laws of motion and universal gravitation. Newton was actually very famous for these discoveries and that’s why people hear about him so commonly. Newton wanted to believe that motion and gravity was more than just something that existed. The famous story of the apple incident was a story that Newton himself told about how he was inspired to develop his theory of gravitation based on an apple falling from a tree. Some say that it’s a myth and that he did not reach his theory of gravity at any one moment. Friends of Newton do confirm this but not the cartoonish version where the apple actually hit his head. In July of 1687, Newton’s book, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, was published with some financial help from Edmond Halley. In this piece of work, Newton stated the three universal laws of motion that allowed many advances of the industrial revolution to take place which wouldn’t change for 200 years and are still the building blocks of technologies of modern day. He used the word gravitas (translated to “weight”) to describe the effect later known as gravity and defined the law of universal gravitation. Newton’s first law (referred to as the law of inertia) states that an object at rest tends to stay at rest and that an object in uniform motion tends to stay in uniform motion unless acted upon by a net external force. His second law states that an applied force on an object equals the rate of change of its momentum with time. His third law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. These three laws of motion and gravitation changed the way scientists viewed motion and gravitation and advanced the world immensely during the scientific revolution. 

Light Prism

From 1670-1672, Newton got interested and took on the scientific area of optics. An amazing discovery that he made was that a prism could break down white light into an entire spectrum of colors, also known as refraction of light. To extend upon this, he proved that by just using a lens and a second prism, he could recompile that color spectrum back into white light. Newton figured out after some testing that weather light was scattered, transmitted, or reflected, it stayed the same color and thus he created what we call “Newton’s theory of color” that proved color was the result of a number of things encountering already-colored light instead of objects creating their own color. The famous object we refer to today as a “telescope” was actually something Newton created while he stumbled upon a problem. He figured out that the lense of ANY refracting telescope would undergo the separation of light into different colors. As proof of this, he designed a telescope that used a mirror as the object to fix the problem. By doing this, he created the first working telescope, The Newtonian Telescope. In 1671, the Royal Society wanted him to demonstrate his work of art and he was then inspired to publish his works on color, which he later expanded into optics. 

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

In the modern world of today, typical high school classes contain a section on calculus, the famous works of Isaac Newton. But some say that that’s not entirely true. Newton was involved in a prolonged dispute with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz on who officially created infinitesimal calculus, known as the Leibniz–Newton calculus controversy. Historians, over the years, have had a hard time going one way or the other, but there is some solid evidence to help. Some, on the side of Leibniz, argue that he had already published a full account of his methods while Newton had yet to publish anything at all. But in Newton’s defense, such an argument could be proved invalid because of the lack of flowing content and holes in the information as critics of Newton have pointed out. Soon after Leibniz’s, Newton published the Principia which had been said to be "a book dense with the theory and application of the infinitesimal calculus". However, Newton was very reluctant  because he worried that his work would rouse criticism and debate. But in 1699, the Royal Society (PRS which Newton was part of) discovered that Leibniz had plagiarized Newton’s work. Full dispute erupted in 1711 after the Royal Society had proclaimed Leibniz to be fraud. In the end, full credit for the discovery of calculus was given to Isaac Newton. 

When one looks back over Newton’s life, this heavy impression forms that Newton really accomplished a lot over his lifetime starting from when he was just 5-years-old. By the time Newton was 12, he had discovered his knack for science and was already exploring very mature aspects of the world through his own eye. The average teen of today’s generation can’t say that they’ve even come close to what Isaac Newton was able to achieve in his time. Some may think that they have so much more time to imagine what they want to be when they grow up, but starting at a young age and developing that liking for something is crucial. This is why Isaac Newton is a hero to me. A hero is someone that stands out. Someone that wants to take on their own path and leaves a solid trail behind. Without Newton, it could have been a long while until someone had uncovered these mysteries, if at all. Without Newton, gravity and motion would have been something that worked because it just did. Without Newton, light and the whole concept of optics would have just been another unsolved mystery. Without Newton, calculus, this extremely advanced form of math, would have never even existed. But because Sir Isaac Newton decided to be a hero, the world became a different place for the better.

History Channel
http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/ufhatch/pages/01-courses/current-courses/08sr-newton.htm 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton
http://www.newton.ac.uk/newtlife.htm  
http://www.christophercrockett.com 
http://www.ebooks.adelaide.edu.au