Isaac Newton
Thesis
Statement: Through his early
life experiences and with the knowledge left by his
predecessors, Sir Isaac
Newton was able to develop calculus, natural forces,
and
optics.
From
birth to early
childhood, Isaac Newton overcame many personal, social, and
mental hardships.
It is through these experiences that helped create the person
society knows
him as in this day and age. The beginning of these obstacles
started at birth
for Newton. Isaac was born premature on Christmas Day 1642, in
the manor
house of Woolsthorpe, 7 miles south of Grantham in Lincolnshire. It is
said
that "Because Galileo, . . . had died that year, a significance
attaches
itself to 1642" (Westfall 1). Though his father had died before
Isaac was
born, he was given his father’s name. He was born into a farming
family that
had worked their way slowly up the "social ladder". The Newton’s
were one
of the few families to prosper in Lincolnshire (Westfall 1). At the
age of three
Isaac’s life would take a drastic turn. When Isaac was three
his mother,
Hannah Ayscough, remarried to the Reverend Barnabas Smith
(Internet-newtonia).
Isaac and the Reverend never got along and the
Reverend would not have a child
that was not his living with him. Isaac
stayed with his grandparents when his
mother went to live with the Reverend
in North Witham. His maternal grandmother
raised Isaac until he was ten. It
is believed that his mother’s second
marriage and her leaving caused many
problems for Isaac as a child. While living
with his grandparents he attended
day school nearby in Skillington and Stoke.
Isaac was surrounded by many
cousins and other family members in the surrounding
area though, "He formed
no bond with any of his numerous relatives that can be
traced later in his
life" (Westfall 11). In 1653 his mother returned after her
second husband
died. With her she brought one half brother and two half
sisters.
Although it is not known, bitterness may have inflicted Isaac
when his three new
siblings arrived. Never the less, two years later at the
age of twelve he was
sent to Grantham to attend grammar school. While
attending grammar school Isaac
lived with the apothecary Mr. Clark (Westfall
12). Mr. Clark had three
stepchildren from the first marriage of his wife,
Miss Storer, who were also
living in his house. In school and at home Isaac
was apparently different and
did not get along with any other boys. He was
often in fights and remembered
only one nice boy from school, Chrichloe. All
the other boys seemed to hate him.
He was more comfortable in the company
of girls. He made doll furniture for Mr.
Clark’s daughter. From this
Isaac’s first and last romantic experience
developed. "Indeed, as the two
grew older, something of a romance apparently
developed between him and Miss
Storer" (Westfall 13). From doll furniture
Newton moved on to other
little machines. He used all the money his mother sent
him to buy tools and
filled his room with the machines. He fell in love with Mr.
Clark’s
library and would read as often as possible. At times he would spend
so much
time on projects that he would fall behind in school. When he realized
he was
falling behind all Isaac had to do was pick up his textbook and
would
immediately be caught up. Through his machines Newton became proficient
in
drawing and his inventions steadily became more elaborate. At the age
of
seventeen in 1659, Newton left Mr. Clark and had another life
changing
experience. When Newton was seventeen his mother took him out of
school and
brought him back to the family farm. Trying to teach him how to
run the farm and
manage the estate was a failure. Newton would always bribe a
hired hand to do
the work he was supposed to. When he was supposed to be in
town selling produce
he would go to his old room in Mr. Clark’s house and
read or play with his
machines. In all of his spare time he returned to
inventing and building
machines. Newton’s uncle and old schoolmaster saw that
he was in the wrong
trade and urged his mother to prepare him to attend the
University (Westfall
17). In 1660 he returned to Grantham to finish
grammar school and prepare for
the university. In June of 1661 Newton entered
Trinity College, Cambridge
(Internet-groups). While at Cambridge Newton
studied mathematics (Internet-newtonia).
This is when Newton first
started to delve into the many discoveries he would
soon be making.
Throughout Isaac Newton’s childhood and early adulthood he
came in contact
with many obstacles. Whether it was his mother leaving or his
inability to
socialize with his peers, Newton overcame the hardships that faced
him. He
was able to leave the family estate and trade behind in order to receive
a
better education. His intelligence is what separated him from everyone
else.
The ability he showed as a child was just the beginning. Newton
made most of his
most important discoveries – pure mathematics, theory of
gravitation, and
optics – before he even graduated college. Although he
learned geometry
through school, he spoke of himself as self-taught. One of
his earliest
mathematical discoveries was the binomial theorm. "The binomial
theorm gives a
formula, or rule, as Newton called it, for writing down the
expansion of any
power of (1+x)." (Anthony 53) An example of this is as
follows: (1+x)^n = 1 +
nx + n(n-1) x^2 + n(n-1)(n-2) x^3 + ... nx^(n-1) + x^n
1*2 1*2*3 This was an
early attempt at understanding differentiation. "Newton
made contributions to
all branches of mathematics then studied, but is
especially famous for his
solutions to the contemporary problems in
analytical geometry of drawing
tangents to curves (differentiation) and
defining areas bounded by curves
(integration)." (Hall online) He discovered
that they were inverse to each
other. At the same time, he figured a way out
to solve these problems with his
method of fluxions and inverse method of
fluxions. Fluxions are concerned with
the rate at which the change occurs.
The rate of change of a quantity indicates
how the quantity is increasing or
decreasing at a given time. The idea of"rate of change" is so important in the
realm of engineering, where
complicated changes in motion occur. The areas of
surfaces, and volumes of
solids almost always require these methods for their
evaluations, as do also
centers of gravity and moments of inertia. Even the
modern study of aerodynamics
and the science of hydrodynamics would be
impossible without the principles of
the calculus. One of the most valuable
applications of the differential calculus
may be found in problems involving
maxima and minima. "Now it is known that
the value of the differential
coefficient at any point on the curve varies with
the angle that the tangent
at the point makes with the axis of x. In passing
through a maximum or a
minimum, the inclination of the tangent becomes zero, so
that the pints of
maxima and minima may be found by equating the differential
coefficient to
zero." (Anthony 73) By setting up these basic calculations,
Newton paved
the way to understanding the theory of gravitation. As far as the
idea of
universal gravitation is concerned, the essential work was done
before
Newton was twenty-four. In eighteen months, Newton wrote what is
considered the
greatest scientific work ever written. He called this book
Philosophiae
Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural
Philosophy), which is
usually known by the last two words. "In the book
Newton codified Galileo’s
findings into the three laws of motion." (Wilson
online) The first law of
motion was called "the principle of inertia." "A
body at rest remains at
rest and a body in motion remains in motion at a
constant velocity as long as
outside forces are not involved." (Wilson
online) The second law of motion was
titled "motion defined in terms of mass
and acceleration." This was the
first clear distinction between the mass of a
body and its weight. He showed
that mass was just resistance to acceleration;
in other words, mass is the
amount of inertia a body has. He also showed that
weight was the amount of
gravitational force between a body and another body
(the earth). The last of the
famous laws was "action and reaction." This law
just states that for every
action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
That low governs the behavior
of rockets. Using these three laws, Newton was
able to figure out the way
gravitational force between the earth and the moon
could be calculated. Because
you could use that calculation for any two
bodies in the universe, the equation
became the law of universal gravitation.
With this, he also calculated the
centripetal force needed to hold a stone in
a sling, and the relation between
the length of a pendulum and the time of
its swing. As you well know, Newton was
a very well rounded and intelligent
man. Not only did he do work with math and
physics, but he also discovered
the basics of optics. This is a picture taken
from Compton’s Interactive
Encyclopedia, 1997 Edition. It shows Newton as he
was experimenting with
prisms and discovering the properties of white light.
"He investigated
the refraction of light by a glass prism; developing over a
few years a
series of increasingly elaborate, refined, and exact experiments,
Newton
discovered measurable, mathematical patterns in the phenomenon of
colour."
(Hall online) He found that white light was a mix of varied colored
rays. During
his time, the telescope was just being invented and improved
upon. Soon, the
inventers noticed a distortion in the distant objects they
were viewing. When
they used a bigger lens, the light seemed to get blurry.
This blurred effect is
known as chromatic aberration. The only reason the
other intellects of the time
could not figure out what was causing the
problem was because they believed that
white light from the sun was pure,
when in all actuality, Newton proved wrong.
Another contribution was the
reflective telescope; he knew that the refractive
telescope could only be so
big, hence prohibiting extreme magnification. His
optical studies stopped
because of the Great Plague that hit in 1666. That is
why he is mainly known
for his mathematical discoveries and the laws of
gravitation. Newton once
said, "If I have seen further than most men, it is
because I have stood upon
the shoulders of giants"
(www.english.upenn.edu/~jlnch/Frank_Demo/People/newton.html).
Just as
Newton built upon the existing knowledge of Descartes, Boyle,
and
Galileo, we have built upon the knowledge, which he has bestowed upon
us. It
seems as if there is a genius every one or two centuries whom steps
beyond the
bounds of the time in which he lives in, and Newton was one of
those men. The
only problem with him was, he could think of the processes,
and inventions, yet
the world at that time did not possess the technology to
build and use what he
had envisioned. "Newton’s contributions to physical
theories dominated
scientific thought for two centuries and remain important
today" (Serway 86).
Sir Isaac Newton’s contributions of Calculus and his
phenomenal three laws of
motion have allowed we as a people to achieve things
that he himself could never
have imagined. Undoubtedly the first and greatest
of Newton’s inventions was
his development of what we call, modern day
calculus. "Before the advent of
calculus, mathematics was concerned with
static situations and could not deal
with the constant change which is ever
present in the word around us"(The New
American Encyclopedia Vol. 3:
891). This ingenious mathematical method has
provided us with the ability to
create things which the great philosophers of
the past could only dream of.
This mathematical method allows us to make precise
calculations by using
specified equations with only a few known quantities. Have
you ever tried to
determine the volume of a solid after revolving a two
dimensional object
around an axis on the Cartesian plane? Without calculus it is
not impossible,
but it would be impractical to try and attack such a problem
without the
proper tools. Without calculus, it would be like trying to eat soup
with a
fork. "With calculus, Newton’s first great achievement, he provided
himself
with the mathematical tools necessary for the rest of
his
work"(www.tiac.net/users/bruen/newton.html). Mathematics, science,
and
technology go hand in hand. Without the proper mathematical methods,
the
advancement in science and technology is extremely limited.
"Newton’s
contributions provided the leap from the possible to the
actual"(www.tiac.net/users/bruen/newton.html).
With Newton’s new
mathematical tools, he was able to develop and prove his
laws of motion and
gravitation. "In 1666 the contemplation of the fall of an
apple led Newton to
his greatest discovery of all, that of the law of
gravitation and
motion"(www.reformation.org/newton.html). Newton’s three
laws of motion: 1)
Bodies continue in a state of rest or uniform motion unless
that condition is
changed by applied force; 2) The rate of change of momentum is
proportional
to the acting force, and is in the direction that the force acts;
3)
Whenever force is applied to a body there is an equal and opposite
reaction;
(The New American Encyclopedia Vol. 6: 1930) "All physical laws are
stated
mathematically as differential equations "(The New American
Encyclopedia Vol.
3: 892). "As a consequence of his theories, Newton was
able to explain the
motion of the planets, the ebb and flow of the tides, and
man special features
of the motion of the Moon and the Earth"(Serway 86). And
with these given laws
of motion, we can verify and predict the way any given
object will react to its
environment. With these, we are able to accurately
predict the path of
projectiles, and this provides us with a safety barrier
so that we can be warned
prematurely of impending danger. So in essence,
these laws have helped we as a
people to sustain life, as we know it, by
giving us the means to detect and
respond to any problems that might arise.
Perhaps the best way to see what Sir
Isaac Newton has given us is to look
at what we as a people depend on most, the
computer. Without the process of
analytical geometry, better known as calculus,
life wouldn’t be as easy as it
is today. Meaning that the age of computers
would have never come about and
without them, manual labor would be used instead
of automated labor, which
would be a lot more costly, impractical, and
inefficient. Let’s face it, it
is just this simple, computers run the world as
we know it! We rely on
computers for everything, and without calculus, computers
might still exist,
but the programs which run them would be nonexistent, simply
due to the fact
that the majority of computers don’t run on the same input
from day to day.
They run based on varying input. For the programs that run
computers to be
effective and efficient, they must be able to handle multiple
inputs, and
give reliable outputs when prompted. As it can clearly be seen, Sir
Isaac
Newton’s numerous contributions in the areas of science and mathematics
have
made it possible for we as a people to seemingly advance at an
exponential
rate. As Newton accredited his accomplishments to his
predecessors, so must we
attribute the success we have had today to the
numerous accomplishments of
Newton in the areas of Science and
Mathematics. If we as a people today have
achieved great things, it is
because we have stood upon the shoulders of the
giant, Sir Isaac
Newton.
Bibliography
Anthony, H. D. Sir Isaac Newton. New York:
Abelard-Schuman Limited, 1960. 53,
73. Hall, Alfred Rupert. "Isaac
Newton." Microsoft Encarta. 20 October 1999
. Hall, Rupert. Isaac Newton.
Cambridge: Blackwell, 1992. Moore, Patrick. Isaac
Newton. London: Adam
& Charles Black Limited, 1957. Newton. 6 November 99
. Newton. February
1997
. Newton. 6 November 99
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. Newtonia.
1999
. Serway, Raymond. Principles of Physics. Orlando: Harcourt Brace
College, 1998.
86. The New American Encyclopedia. 12vols. New York: Books
Inc, 1971. 891, 892,
1930. Westfall, Richard S. The Life of Isaac Newton.
New York. Cambridge
University Press. 1993. 1-18. Wilson, Fred L.
"Newton." History of Science.
Rochester Institute of Technology. 20
October 1999