Isaac newton apple and gravity

Isaac Newton: Who He Was, Why Apples Are Falling

Sir Isaac Newton was born especially tiny but grew into a massive intellect and still looms large, thanks to his findings on gravity, light, motion, mathematics, and more.

Isaac Newton Kneller Painting

Far more than just discovering the laws of gravity, Sir Isaac Newton was also responsible for working out many of the principles of visible light and the laws of motion, and contributing to calculus.

Photograph of Sir Godfrey Kneller painting by Science Source

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By Kate Ravilious

Thursday, March 12, 2020

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Legend has it that Isaac Newton formulated gravitational theory in 1665 or 1666 after watching an apple fall and asking why the apple fell straight down, rather than sideways or even upward.

«He showed that the force that makes the apple fall and that holds us on the ground is the same as the force that keeps the moon and planets in their orbits,» said Martin Rees, a former president of Britain’s Royal Society, the United Kingdom’s national academy of science, which was once headed by Newton himself.

«His theory of gravity wouldn’t have got us global positioning satellites,» said Jeremy Gray, a mathematical historian at the Milton Keynes, U.K.-based Open University. «But it was enough to develop space travel.»

Isaac Newton, Underachiever?

Born two to three months prematurely on January 4, 1643, in a hamlet in Lincolnshire, England, Isaac Newton was a tiny baby who, according to his mother, could have fit inside a quart mug. A practical child, he enjoyed constructing models, including a tiny mill that actually ground flour—powered by a mouse running in a wheel.

Admitted to the University of Cambridge on 1661, Newton at first failed to shine as a student.

In 1665 the school temporarily closed because of a bubonic plague epidemic and Newton returned home to Lincolnshire for two years. It was then that the apple-falling brainstorm occurred, and he described his years on hiatus as «the prime of my age for invention.»

Despite his apparent affinity for private study, Newton returned to Cambridge in 1667 and served as a mathematics professor and in other capacities until 1696.

Isaac Newton: More than Master of Gravity

Decoding gravity was only part of Newton’s contribution to mathematics and science. His other major mathematical preoccupation was calculus, and along with German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz, Newton developed differentiation and integration—techniques that remain fundamental to mathematicians and scientists.

Meanwhile, his interest in optics led him to propose, correctly, that white light is actually the combination of light of all the colors of the rainbow. This, in turn, made plain the cause of chromatic aberration—inaccurate color reproduction—in the telescopes of the day.

To solve the problem, Newton designed a telescope that used mirrors rather than just glass lenses, which allowed the new apparatus to focus all the colors on a single point—resulting in a crisper, more accurate image. To this day, reflecting telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope, are mainstays of astronomy.

Following his apple insight, Newton developed the three laws of motion, which are, in his own words:

• Newton’s Law of Inertia: Every object persists in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.
• Newton’s Law of Acceleration: Force is equal to the change in momentum (mV) per change in time. For a constant mass, force equals mass times acceleration [expressed in the famous equation F = ma].
• Newton’s Law of Action and Reaction: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Newton published his findings in 1687 in a book called Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) commonly known as the Principia.

«Newton’s Principia made him famous—few people read it, and even fewer understood it, but everyone knew that it was a great work, rather like Einstein’s Theory of Relativity over two hundred years later,» writes mathematician Robert Wilson of the Open University in an article on a university website.

Isaac Newton’s «Unattractive Personality»

Despite his wealth of discoveries, Isaac Newton wasn’t well liked, particularly in old age, when he served as the head of Britain’s Royal Mint, served in Parliament, and wrote on religion, among other things.

«As a personality, Newton was unattractive—solitary and reclusive when young, vain and vindictive in his later years, when he tyrannized the Royal Society and vigorously sabotaged his rivals,» the Royal Society’s Rees said.

Sir David Wallace, director of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge, U.K., added, «He was a complex character, who also pursued alchemy»—the search for a method to turn base metals into gold—»and, as Master of the Mint, showed no clemency towards coiners [counterfeiters] sentenced to death.»

In 1727, at 84, Sir Isaac Newton died in his sleep and was buried with pomp and ceremony in Westminster Abbey in London.

Photograph of Sir Godfrey Kneller painting by Science Source

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Legend has it that a young Isaac Newton was sitting under an apple tree when he was bonked on the head by a falling piece of fruit, a 17th-century “aha moment” that prompted him to suddenly come up with his law of gravity. In reality, things didn’t go down quite like that. Newton, the son of a farmer, was born in 1642 near Grantham, England, and entered Cambridge University in 1661. Four years later, following an outbreak of the bubonic plague, the school temporarily closed, forcing Newton to move back to his childhood home, Woolsthorpe Manor. It was during this period at Woolsthorpe (Newton returned to Cambridge in 1667) that he was in the orchard there and witnessed an apple drop from a tree. There’s no evidence to suggest the fruit actually landed on his head, but Newton’s observation caused him to ponder why apples always fall straight to the ground (rather than sideways or upward) and helped inspired him to eventually develop his law of universal gravitation. In 1687, Newton first published this principle, which states that every body in the universe is attracted to every other body with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them, in his landmark work the “Principia,” which also features his three laws of motion.

In 1726, Newton shared the apple anecdote with William Stukeley, who included it in a biography, “Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton’s Life,” published in 1752. According to Stukeley, “After dinner, the weather being warm, we went into the garden, & drank thea under the shade of some apple trees… he told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind…. occasion’d by the fall of an apple, as he sat in a contemplative mood.”

The esteemed mathematician and physicist died in 1727 and was buried at Westminster Abbey. His famous apple tree continues to grow at Woolsthorpe Manor.

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Newton’s apple: The real story

We’ve all heard the story. A young Isaac Newton is sitting beneath an apple tree contemplating the mysterious universe. Suddenly – boink! -an apple hits him on the head. “Aha!” he shouts, or perhaps, “Eureka!” In a flash he understands that the very same force that brought the apple crashing toward the ground also keeps the moon falling toward the Earth and the Earth falling toward the sun: gravity.

Or something like that. The apocryphal story is one of the most famous in the history of science and now you can see for yourself what Newton actually said. Squirreled away in the archives of London’s Royal Society was a manuscript containing the truth about the apple.

It is the manuscript for what would become a biography of Newton entitled Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton’s Lifewritten by William Stukeley, an archaeologist and one of Newton’s first biographers, and published in 1752. Newton told the apple story to Stukeley, who relayed it as such:

“After dinner, the weather being warm, we went into the garden and drank thea, under the shade of some apple trees…he told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. It was occasion’d by the fall of an apple, as he sat in contemplative mood. Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground, thought he to himself…”

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The Royal Society has made the manuscript available today for the first time in a fully interactive digital form on their website at royalsociety.org/turning-the-pages. The digital release is occurring on the same day as the publication of Seeing Further (HarperPress, £25), an illustrated history of the Royal Society edited by Bill Bryson, which marks the Royal Society’s 350th anniversary this year.

So it turns out the apple story is true – for the most part. The apple may not have hit Newton in the head, but I’ll still picture it that way. Meanwhile, three and a half centuries and an Albert Einstein later, physicists still don’t really understand gravity. We’re gonna need a bigger apple.

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Isaac Newton: Who He Was, Why Apples Are Falling

Sir Isaac Newton was born especially tiny but grew into a massive intellect and still looms large, thanks to his findings on gravity, light, motion, mathematics, and more.

Isaac Newton Kneller Painting

Far more than just discovering the laws of gravity, Sir Isaac Newton was also responsible for working out many of the principles of visible light and the laws of motion, and contributing to calculus.

Photograph of Sir Godfrey Kneller painting by Science Source

This lists the logos of programs or partners of NG Education which have provided or contributed the content on this page. Leveled by

By Kate Ravilious

Thursday, March 12, 2020

Select Text Level:

Physically, Sir Isaac Newton was not a large man. However, he had a large intellect, as shown by his discoveries on gravity, light, motion, mathematics, and more.

Legend has it that Isaac Newton came up with gravitational theory in 1665, or 1666, after watching an apple fall. He asked why the apple fell straight down, rather than sideways or even upward. «He showed that the force that makes the apple fall and that holds us on the ground is the same as the force that keeps the moon and planets in their orbits,» Martin Rees says. He is a former president of Britain’s Royal Society, the United Kingdom’s national academy of science, which was once headed by Newton himself.

«His theory of gravity wouldn’t have got us global positioning satellites,» said Jeremy Gray, a mathematical historian at the Open University in Milton Keynes, U.K. «But it was enough to develop space travel.»

The Cambridge Years

Newton was born two to three months prematurely on January 4, 1643, in Lincolnshire, England. A practical child, he enjoyed constructing models, including a tiny mill that actually ground flour—powered by a mouse running in a wheel.

Admitted to the University of Cambridge on 1661, Newton at first failed to shine as a student. In 1665, the school temporarily closed because of the bubonic plague, a disease that killed more than 100,000 people in London in that period. As a result, Newton went back home to Lincolnshire for two years.

It was around that time that the apple-falling brainstorm occurred. Newton then returned to Cambridge in 1667, and served as a mathematics professor until 1696.

Newton’s Advancements

Understanding gravity was only part of Newton’s contribution to mathematics and science. His other major interest was calculus, a subject that examines rates, or the measurement of change. Along with German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz, Newton developed differentiation and integration. These two methods are still used in may areas of science. Differentiation is used to measure any rate of change, like how quickly an animal species reproduces. Integration is often used in geometry to calculate areas and volumes.

Newton also took great interest in optics, the study of light and its behavior. This led him to propose, correctly, that white light is actually the combination of light of all the colors of the rainbow. He used his knowledge to show why telescopes back then couldn’t reproduce colors accurately. Newton designed a telescope that used mirrors rather than just glass lenses. This allowed the new machine to focus all the colors on a single point, resulting in a crisper, more accurate image. To this day, reflecting telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope, are key tools of astronomy.

Newton’s apple insight allowed him to develop the three laws of motion. These laws are still used to describe how forces affect objects, like how rockets fly or baseballs move. A force may be thought of as a push or pull in a specific direction.

First Law of Motion: Inertia

An object at rest will stay at rest, and an object in motion will stay in motion along a straight line unless moved by an outside force.

Second Law of Motion: Acceleration

An object will accelerate if force is applied to it. Acceleration is the rate of change of an object’s velocity. The acceleration will happen in the direction of the force. For a fixed force, bigger objects will have a smaller acceleration.

If the mass does not change, force equals mass times acceleration, or F = ma.

Third Law Of Motion: Action and Reaction

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. For example, say Object A hits Object B. This means that A is exerting a force on B in a certain direction. By Newton’s third law, A is also receiving a force by B. The two forces are equal and are directed in opposite directions.

The «Principia»

Newton published his findings in 1687, in a book called Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. The Latin title is translated as Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, and the book is commonly known as the Principia.

«Newton’s Principia made him famous—few people read it, and even fewer understood it,» wrote mathematician Robert Wilson of the Open University. «But everyone knew that it was a great work, rather like Einstein’s Theory of Relativity over two hundred years later.»

The Vain and Vengeful Years

Despite his wealth of discoveries, Newton wasn’t well-liked, particularly in old age. At that point, he served as the head of Britain’s Royal Mint, which printed money and created coins. He also served in Parliament, a branch of the British government, and wrote on religion, among other things. As a personality, Newton was solitary when young, and vain and vengeful in his later years, Rees says. He «sabotaged his rivals,» Rees adds.

Sir David Wallace is director of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge, England. He said Newton «was a complex character, who also pursued alchemy»—the search for a method to turn common metals into gold. As Master of the Mint, Newton showed no mercy toward counterfeit coin-makers sentenced to death, Wallace says.

In 1727, at 84, Sir Isaac Newton died in his sleep. He was buried with much ceremony in Westminster Abbey in London, England.

Photograph of Sir Godfrey Kneller painting by Science Source

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