Intr od ucti on

Newton was born in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, in England. Newton, Sir Isaac (16421727), English physicist, mathematician, and natural philosopher, considered one of the most important scientists of all time. Newton formulated laws of universal gravitation and motionlaws that explain how objects move on Earth as well as through the heavens (Mechanics). He established the modern study of opticsor the behavior of lightand built the first reflecting telescope. His mathematical insights led him to invent the area of mathematics called calculus. Newton stated his ideas in several published works, two of which, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 1687) and Opticks (1704), are considered among the greatest scientific works ever produced. Newtons revolutionary contributions explained the workings of a large part of the physical world in mathematical terms, and they suggested that science may provide explanations for other phenomena as well. Published in 1687, Newtons two-volume Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) contains his important three laws of motion, also called Newtons laws, excerpted here.Newton carried

Galileos equation forward by introducing the concept of force. He began by restating Galileos law of inertia as a situation applying to the absence of force. Newtons first law states A body in motion remains in motion (with constant velocity) unless acted upon by an external force. Rest, in Newtons laws, is merely an example of motion with zero velocity. So force is defined as the agency that changes the state of motion, and thus the velocity, of a body. Newtons famous second law relates a to a force acting on the object via the equation F = ma. The quantity m is the stuff inside the object, which Newton called inertial mass. The bigger the value of m, the larger the force required to get the object movingthat is, accelerating. Applied to Galileos experiments, F is the force of gravity tugging at the object and aimed toward the center of Earth. F is carefully defined as the sum of all forces. Newtons second law accounted for the motion of planets pulled by the Suns gravitational force; the motion of projectiles, influenced by air and the pull of gravity; and the tides, which are caused by ocean waters pulled by the Sun and the Moon. Newton proved mathematically what Kepler had concluded from observationsthat planets move in elliptical paths. To make this proof, he had to know the precise form of F. F must change, depending on the distance of the planet from the Sun. So Newton had to guess the way the force of the Sun on a planet grows weaker as the distance between these two objects increases. His guess was an inverse square law, which states that the force of gravity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between

the two objects. Newtons equations also took into account the fact that objects have two kinds of masses: inertial mass that resists motion and gravitational mass that encourages motion. He wrote another equation illustrating that for any object, the two types of massesgravitational mass and inertial massare equal. Einstein would return to this idea in his general theory of relativity, wherein he made the equality of inertia and gravitational masses a key point. The curious behavior of objects in space capsules, which we call weightlessness, works on the same principle. The astronaut, his sandwich, and his drink all float together, apparently without gravity. But gravity is still pulling on the astronaut, and the capsule, and the sandwich. They respond according to their inertia, and the two effects cancel each other out. Newtons work was vital to the evolution of modern physics. Newton's third law-" To every action, there is equal and opposite reaction".

Wav e Ph eno me na in Gen era l

When we speak of waves, we generally think of those we see in the water, but there are in fact two different kinds. We have already discussed this in the context of the transmission of seismic waves through the Earths interior but it is so important that I repeat some of that discussion here.

Longitudinal waves, which I demonstrated with a `slinky toy' in class, consist of

disturbances, which pass through a medium by virtue of to-and-fro motions of and collisions between atoms. Sound is an example. I speak, and my vibrating vocal cords cause the atoms near me to `jiggle' in some way. As they move away from me and towards you, they bump into other atoms and rebound, but the other atoms carry the motion forward until they in turn collide with yet more atoms, and so on. The `jiggling' eventually reaches your ears (at the speed of sound, about 300 metres per second in the atmosphere) and set your eardrums to vibrating in a way that your brain can interpret as a sound which is comprehensible (I hope).

Transverse waves, which I demonstrated in class by wiggling up and down one end of a stretched rope, consist of disturbances which are across (or transverse to) the direction in which the wave itself is going. For instance, if you were a bug on the rope, you would be moving up and down as the ripples pass by, but the disturbance itself passes along the length of the rope. The familiar wind-driven waves at the surface of a body of water are also transverse: a cork floating in the water bobs up and down where it is, while the disturbance passes through the water along the surface.

A common feature in both of these types of waves is that the medium itself does not suffer any net displacement: the atoms go back and forth or up and down, but if you look again a few minutes later you will see that they are still near where they were at the start. Likewise, a cork floating in the water

merely bobs up and down `in place'. There is room for confusion here, because you are used to seeing waves breaking onto a beach. At the shore, individual atoms of water actually move quite a lot as the waves spill up onto the sand; but this phenomenon is caused by the complex interactions between the transverse wave and the lake bottom, which itself is sloped and irregular, causing friction and so on. In the open sea, the wave disturbance merely passes through the watery medium without carrying the constituent atoms along with it. In what follows, we will consider the evidence for light being a transverse wave. (In preparation for that, you should read carefully the definitions of wavelength, frequency, and so on that you will find on page 164 of the text.) When we speak of light as a wave phenomenon, we try to find ways in which its behaviour is not consistent with what you would expect from a bunch of little energy-carrying `bullets'. Are there such ways? Waves Spreading Out from a Hole Consider ocean waves arriving at a breakwater with a hole in it, as shown in the figure:
Diffraction:

The breakwater could consist of a cement wall, say, with an opening - the sort of thing you find near a yacht harbour. The boats enter through

the gap in the wall, while the wall itself provides some protection against very strong waves crashing directly into the docks and the shore. Now, if you were standing at point X on the shore, directly opposite the gap in the wall, you would surely see waves breaking at your feet onto the beach. But what if you were standing at point Y, perhaps fifty meters north along the shore? Would the water there be as completely still as a millpond? No indeed! As you know from experience, the disturbances in the water would indeed spread out as shown in the figure, and people along a wide stretch of the shoreline would see the water slosh up and down, although less vigorously than would the person directly opposite the gap. This is quite distinct from the behaviour of lumps that move in straight lines - things like bullets, for instance. If you are ever being shot at, just duck through the cover afforded by a doorway in a cement wall and you are safe; there is no need to fear that the bullets will 'smear out' in all directions as they pass through the doorway. But now, on a much smaller scale, think of a source of light to the left of the figure and shining onto a little hole in an opaque card. If the light was like bullets, you would expect to see a tiny distinct spot of light directly opposite the hole, but no light at any other location. Instead, you will find that it spreads out into a fuzzy blob. (In fact, it does more than produce just a fuzzy blob. We would also see some interesting structure, including rings and so forth, which we will not concern ourselves with here, other than to note that this too is well understood in

terms of the wave nature of light. You may protest that you do not see this in dayto-day life! In general, an object held up in front of a source of light seems to cast a very sharp shadow. (Imagine making hand-shadows to entertain your kids at night, for instance.) That is true: most shadows do look quite sharp. The effects of diffraction are really only important if the hole is very small (comparable to the wavelength of light itself). In other words, light which passes through an extremely tiny pinhole gets smeared out into a relatviely large fuzzy patch; but if the hole is much larger, the effect is not readily seen.

Diffra ctio n: Waves `Bending' Around Corners

We have considered a hole in a seawall (or, in the context of the bullets, a doorway in a cement wall), but in fact the phenomenon is more general than this. The effects of diffraction are seen wherever there is a sharp discontinuity. Waves, for example, can `bend,' or diffract, around corners. Indeed, this is how you can hear voices around corners, even if there are no walls or other buildings to provide echoes or reverberation. Sound waves diffract. Light can be shown to do the same thing. Once again this occurs on very small scales, since the wavelengths of visible light are so short. Consequently, one doesn't notice such phenomena in day-to-day life. As evidence, however, I showed you a picture in class, one in which we could see the sharp edge of a razor blade and a so-called `shadow

diffraction pattern,' a series of dark lines parallel to the edges of the razor. (I do not want to go into the technical details of how these lines are formed. Suffice it to say that it is fundamentally due to this `bending around corners.') This is further evidence that light behaves like a wave. By the way, you might be tempted to think that the phenomenon of twilight is caused by soemthing like this. Does the light from the sun diffract around the edge of the Earth so that we still see a bit of sunlight even after it has set? The answer is no - or, at least, that this effect is utterly negligible. Twilights are caused by the gas and dust in the Earth's atmosphere. If the Earth were completely airless, we would be plunged into pitch darkness the instant the sun set. Instead, we enjoy lingering twilights because of the scattering (bouncing) of light off molecules and atoms high in the Earth's atmosphere.

In terfere nce : Waves Interacting with One

Another Just above, we considered ocean waves arriving at a breakwater with a single hole in it. A more interesting effect would be produced by a breakwater with two holes in it, as shown in the following figure:

Upon the arrival of parallel waves from the open sea, each hole acts as an independent centre of new sets of waves propagating out towards the beach. In the figure, I have colour-coded the new waves, with the hole at the top producing a set of expanding black ripples (one of which has been coloured green, for reasons to become obvious in a moment) and the one at the bottom producing a set of expanding blue ripples (one of which has been coloured red). At the right of the picture, the dotted parts of a few of the waves show how they would have continued had they not run up against the beach, which is represented by the thin black line. Now ask yourself what you would see if you were standing on the beach in the various locations indicated. If you were exactly half-way between the two holes in the breakwater, at the point marked with a large red letter 'A', you would be seeing a peak (an upward surge of water, represented by the solid green line) in the wave coming from the top hole, and a peak in the wave coming from

the bottom hole (the solid red line). At that location, therefore, the upward surge of the water would be redoubled as the independent waves arrive and their effects add. A moment later, you would see a trough (a downward displacement) in the waves arriving from the top hole, and another trough in the wave pattern arriving from the bottom hole, so the the total downward effect would also be doubled. These effects would repeat again and again at the frequency of the original waves. In other words, at point A you would see waves which are enhanced in effect because they are arriving in phase from the two holes in the breakwater. This is called constructive interference. In short, if you were at position A, you would see the water going up and down with great vigour!

You can identify other positions where the behaviour would be qualitatively similar. At the points labelled 'B1' and 'B2,' for instance, we would expeience the coincident arrival of a wave from the top hole and another from the bottom hole. This situation differs from position A in that the arriving waves did not set off at the same time from the two holes. (At point B1, we are seeing the arrival of the black wave which is just ahead of the green one, whereas we see the arrival of the blue wave which is four waves in front of the red one.) But the effect is the same: we experience a vigourous up-and-down of the water as these disturbances arrive in phase.

Now look at the position marked C1. Here we see an upward peak from the top hole (the green wave), but a downward trough from the bottom hole (we are exactly halfway between the successive crests represented by the blue waves). The net displacement of the water is zero, and that will always be the case. Whatever disturbance is arriving from the top hole, a disturbance of equal size but in the opposite direction will be arriving from the bottom hole. This, then, is a region of destructive interference, and the water should be as smooth as a millpond all the time at that particular location -- in principle!

In real life, of course, things are not this simple. Water at the seaside is running up against the shore, which may be of irregular depth and roughness, and the wave disturbances rebound off the shore. Still, if you were sitting on the shore you would notice that there are regions where the water seems quite placid, and other regions where the water is sloshing up and down with great vigour. The remarkable thing is that light can be shown to produce the same kind of interference phenomena. There is a classical physics experiment known as the Young double-slit experiment. It duplicates, on a tiny scale, the two-holed ocean breakwater situation just described. Young cut two tiny slits into an opaque screen onto which he shone a light of a well-defined colour (which means, as we will see, that it contains light of just one wavelength). This did not produce two bright images, one of each slit, on the wall

beyond the screen; neither did it produce two fuzzy blobs, as you might have expected from the discussion in the previous few paragraphs. Instead, Young saw a pattern of dark and light bands, as shown here: The bright regions are locations where the `wavefronts of light' add constructively (so the light is very bright); the dark regions are locations where the separate wavefronts cancel out entirely by destructive interference. Light is a wave!

Waves in Wha t?
When we considered sound and water waves, we were speaking of mechanical disturbances in some medium. For instance, the sound of my voice is generated by vibrating vocal cords which set the air in motion; the waves in the ocean are set going by the effects of the wind pushing the water about; and so forth. Thereafter the disturbance propagates by simple physical laws. The atoms collide with other atoms and rebound, passing on their energy and momentum, etc. But light is different in that it can pass through a vacuum. (Sound, of course, cannot). There does not have to be a medium to carry the light. What is happening?

A century or more ago, it was believed that there was a medium through which light propagated, a medium called the luminiferous (`light-bearing') ether. Since light passes between the stars and planets, it was obvious that the ether had to fill all space. Yet the Earth has clearly been orbiting the sun in a more-or-less-unchanging orbit for many millions of years, so it must experience a negligible amount of `wind resistance' from the ether. This consideration, and the extremely high speed with which light travels, implied some very unusual properties for the ether. A great goal of late 19thcentury physics, then, was to find absolute proof of the existence of the ether, and to learn more about its properties. The death-knell came with a famous experiment, carried out by Michelson and Morley, which seemed to show that there was no ether. An almost direct consequence of this was Einstein's development of his special theory of relativity, in 1905, a theory which completely changed the way in which we think about space and time. I will not describe those developments now since they fit in more naturally nearer the end of the course. But the important point is that I want you to realize that light is not analogous to sound and other mechanical disturbances which pass through a substance or a medium. It can, and does, travel through the true vacuum of space.

Ele ctromag neti c Wave s

The modern physics interpretation is that light is a wave which consists of changing electric and

magnetic fields which propagate through space (see the figure below). Before going further, let us remind ourselves of what we mean by an electric field. We say that an electric field exists in a location if a charged particle, like a proton, feels an electrical force there (perhaps because of the presence of other charged particles in its vicinity, for instance). That is what makes a spark leap from your fingertip to a doorknob when you build up what we call `static electricity' -- the electrical forces cause the negatively-charged electrons to leap across the gap. Light can be thought of as a transverse wave moving at high speed (300,000 kilometers per second) through intervening space, and consisting of rapidly changing electric and magnetic fields.

Can you predict the effects such a wave might have as it passes by? Well, one answer is that a charged particle (like an electron) sitting by itself in empty space should 'bob up and down' as the wave goes by, just as a cork bobs up and down in the water when a wave passes by. (As you can see from the figure, there is also a changing magnetic field, which is at right angles to the electric field. You can imagine a small compass turning back and forth in quick response to this changing magnetic field as the wave passes by.)

The reality of this interpretation can be tested. Take a strip of metal which is a good conductor (that is, one in which the electrons are fairly free to move) and send light of some wavelength (and associated frequency) towards it. Then design some simple electronics to detect whether or not the electrons are indeed bobbing up and down, an effect which would be tanatamount to producing small electric currents of varying size inside the conductor. This is exactly what happens in your radio antenna or TV antenna!. The signal which is broadcast from the radio or TV station is not visible light, of course, so our eyes are not sensitive to it, but it is light (electromagnetic radiation) none the less. It makes the electrons in the radio antenna ``bob up and down'', and the small electric currents so generated are detected, amplified, and used to determine how to make your speakers vibrate. This in turn creates the sound waves which you hear. Please note an important distinction. Radio waves are light, not sound. They are used by the circuitry in your radio to determine how to make the speakers vibrate, and that is where the sound comes from. Radio astronomers are collecting electromagnetic radiation from the stars and galaxies, not sound (which could never pass through the vacuum of space anyway).

Gra vitati on
Newton's Law of Gravity is not precise in extreme circumstances, such as very high velocities or very strong gravity. For cases such as these, Einstein's General and Special Relativity theories are needed. However, in most other cases, and especially those that we are familiar with on Earth, Newton's Law works extremely well. It is based upon his laws of motion, and it shows how two objects exhibit a force upon the other. It is the equation to the right. It says that the gravitational force experienced is equal to a gravitational constant times both masses divided by the distance between them squared. The value "G" is an extremely small number, and therefore the gravitational force is extremely weak - the weakest of the four fundamental forces. This law also shows that the force of gravity dies off with the square of the distance. This means that if you are twice as far away from something, then the gravitational force you experience is 1/4 as much. if distance is trebled, the force becomes one-ninth as much. He had also discovered the law stating the centrifugal force (or force away from the center) of a body moving uniformly in a circular path. However, he still believed that the earth's gravity and the motions of the planets might be caused by the action

of whirlpools, or vortices, of small corpuscles. He thought of circular motion as the result of a balance between two forces--one centrifugal, the other centripetal (toward the center)--rather than as the result of one force, a centripetal force, which constantly deflects the body away from its inertial path in a straight line. Earth's gravity extended to the Moon, counterbalancing its centrifugal force. From his law of centrifugal force and Kepler's third law of planetary motion, Newton deduced that the centrifugal (and hence centripetal) force of the Moon or of any planet must decrease as the inverse square of its distance from the center of its motion. Newton applied his mathematical talents & proved that if a body obeys Kepler's second law (which states that the line joining a planet to the sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times), then the body is being acted upon by a centripetal force. This discovery revealed for the first time the physical significance of Kepler's second law. Newton succeeded in showing that a body moving in an elliptical path and attracted to one focus must indeed be drawn by a force that varies as the inverse square of the distance. By common consent the Principia is the greatest scientific book ever written. Within the framework of an infinite, homogeneous, three-dimensional, empty space and a uniformly and eternally flowing "absolute" time, Newton fully analyzed the motion of bodies in resisting and no resisting media under the action of centripetal forces. The results were applied to orbiting bodies, projectiles, pendulum, and free-fall near the Earth.

Law s O f M oti on
Newton's Laws of Motion are still used by physicists all over the world. . Everything in that genre of physics is based upon these three laws: 1. Every object has uniform motion unless acted upon by a force. 2. The force applied to an object is equal to the object's mass times the resulting acceleration: 3. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. These laws are used to describe everything from throwing a ball to the merging of galaxies.

The First Law: Inertia Formalized

As we noted before, there seem coincidentally to be many examples of physical laws `in threes.' Here is another example: Newton's famous three laws of motion. While these warrant careful consideration, and while they can be expressed in technical and mathematical terms, my earnest wish is that you will develop a complete intuitive understanding of what they mean qualitatively. To clarify your understanding, therefore, let us consider them in simple conversational terms. The first law is merely a restatement, in technical terms, of the notion of inertia, a concept introduced by Galileo. Newton now makes explicit the understanding that an object in any state of motion (including rest) will remain unchanged in that state (which means that those at rest will remain at rest) unless some unbalanced force is acting. The word `unbalanced' merely acknowledges that we don't expect any motion to result from balanced forces. If you and your friend both push on a car, one at the front and one at the back, the forces will balance each other and nothing will happen. That is, all kinds of forces can be present, but unless there is an excess force in some direction, there will be no change in the state of motion of the body being pushed or pulled. Let us consider an immediate implication which follows from the First Law. Think of the space shuttle and its astronauts orbiting the Earth. The shuttle does not move in a straight line, but rather follows a

curved path around the Earth. This must mean that some force is acting on it! The force is gravity, as we will see: if the space shuttle did not feel the gravitational force of the Earth, it would simply move in a straight line, and gradually leave the Earth behind. In other words, the shuttle is most emphatically not beyond the Earth's gravity, as is commonly believed, despite the fact that the astronauts experience weightlessness. (I will return to this point later.) This consideration also makes clear the incorrectness of Galileo's thinking: he believed that the circular motion of the moon around the Earth was a natural 'coasting' which was related to inertia without the requirement of any forces at play.

The Second Law: When Forces Are Unbalanced

The second law, perhaps the most famous in all of physics, merely makes quantitative something which we know already by everyday experience. If you kick a tennis ball, it moves away quickly. If you kick a cannon ball, it does not, even if you use the same amount of force. The difference is that massive objects (those containing many atoms and lots of material) are not easily set it motion. This is because they have lots of inertia (resistance to being accelerated from one state of motion, such as rest, into another state of motion). The law is usually given in the form of a very simple equation: F = ma. Let us think in words about what this means!

Suppose first of all that you have an object of a given mass (m) -- that is, an object containing some total number of atoms, some total amount of matter. If a tiny force F acts on it, it will accelerate at a given rate a, which will be rather small (since F is small). If you increase the force F to some larger value, the acceleration a will be larger. In other words, bigger forces make objects accelerate more rapidly than small forces do. A powerful engine can get your car up to highway speed more quickly than a weak engine would. Please note, though, that even a small force can produce a large final speed if it is allowed to act for long enough! The small force generates a small acceleration, so the object gains speed only very slowly; but if the force is applied for many minutes (or hours, or years) the body may wind up moving quite quickly after all. This will become important later on, when we consider interstellar travel. We will have to consider the alternate merits of accelerating to high speed very quickly, using powerful rockets for a brief time, or accelerating rather slowly, using feeble rockets which are allowed to burn for a very long time.

Now consider a situation in which you have a force of fixed size (F) at your disposal - say, all the strength you can muster with your two arms in trying to clear stones and boulders from your garden. If you apply the full force to a stone of small mass, (m) you can really send it flying (and of course in practice you would not bother

applying all your force to it, but rather conserve your energy for the more taxing jobs). But a very massive stone, with large m, would be accelerated only a little, and you would really have to struggle to make it move perceptibly. By the way, this is an opportune moment to warn you about a very common misuse of a word. In physics, a massive body is one which contains a lot of matter in total -- many atoms, or atoms which themselves are particularly massive because they contain many protons and neutrons. This may have nothing to do with the size of the object. A small lead block may be much more massive -- much more resistant to being set in motion by a push, for instance -- than a much larger beach ball. My experience is that students often use the word "massive" to mean nothing more than "big" (often in the sense of "awesome"). Later in the course, we will learn, for example, that as the sun uses up its nuclear fuel, it will expand enormously, becoming a red giant star of such large size that the Earth may wind up inside its outermost parts. But the sun will be no more massive at that time than it is now -- it will contain as many atoms as it ever did, and will not have 'put on weight.' Of course, it will be much less densely packed on average: the atoms will be more widely spread, but the total mass will not have changed. Be very careful about how you use this word, which has a very precise physical meaning!

The Third Law: Action and Reaction

The third law, also known as the "actionreaction" law, is one that causes many people a lot of

confusion. Partly this is because it is used in some situations as a kind of vague metaphor for human behaviour. (If you get mad at me, I'll react by getting mad at you.) But in physics it has a very clearcut meaning. When one body acts on another (as when I use my finger to push a book across the table), then there is a reaction of equal size acting the other way (so my finger feels a force which we register as the resistance of the book to being moved). One reason for confusion is that a lot of people think that if two forces are "equal and opposite" then nothing will happen -- they must cancel out. Why then does anything ever move at all? The answer, of course, is that the forces do not cancel! They act on different bodies, and can have an effect. When you do a pushup, for instance, you are pressing down on the ground, pushing it away from you. The equal and opposite force (the "reaction" of the Earth acting on you) pushes you up and away from the ground. In fact, under the influence of these two forces of equal size, both you and the Earth move, but the Earth is so huge and massive that it budges an immeasurably small amount (remember Newton's second law!), while your body moves perceptibly. By the way, it is worth thinking for a moment about how these forces are transmitted. When you do a pushup, you are flexing your arms in such a way as to push your constituent atoms into the ground, or at least try to. If the ground had no structural rigidity -- imagine doing a pushup on water! -- your hands would merely slide seamlessly into it. As it is, though, the material is held in a rigid configuration by the electric forces between all the constituent atoms,

molecules, and crystals. You are trying to force your constituent atoms (those in your hands and fingers) into these already crowded regions. As your atoms are pushed ever closer to those of the ground, the electric repulsion between the various particles resists the motion and stops your progress. This force, applied to the Earth, pushes it away from you; and the reaction force pushes you away from the Earth. Again, the reason that you are lifted bodily is because you have some rigidity of your own. If you had arms like cooked spaghetti, you would merely flop onto the floor. (Have you ever tried to push a car with a rope?) It does not take volition or conscious intent to make a force act on a body, or to generate a reaction force. Consider a brick sitting on the floor, for instance. I will anticipate Newton's introduction of gravitation to point out what you already know: the gravity of the Earth is pulling down on the brick, and if there were no floor there it would merely accelerate downwards, or fall, in accordance with Newton's second law. But, just as with you and the pushup, the gravitational tug downwards has the effect of trying to intermingle the atoms of the brick with those of the floor. The repulsive force between the electrically-charged constituents of the atoms resists that action (Newton's third law) and is strong enough to hold the brick up.

Opti cs
Newton's optical research began during his undergraduate years at Cambridge. In 1665-1666, Newton performed a number of experiments on the composition of light. Guided initially by the writings of Kepler and Descartes, Newton's main discovery was that visible (white) light is heterogeneous--that is, white light is composed of colors that can be considered primary. Through a brilliant series of experiments, Newton demonstrated that prisms separate rather than modify white light. Newton also demonstrated that the colors of the spectrum, once thought to be qualities, correspond to an observed and quantifiable 'degree of Refrangibility. 'Newton's most famous experiment, the experimentum crucis, demonstrated his theory of the composition of light. Briefly, in a dark room Newton allowed a narrow beam of sunlight to pass from a small hole in a window shutter through a prism, thus breaking the white light into an oblong spectrum on a board. Then, through a small aperture in the board, Newton selected a given color (for example, red) to pass through yet another aperture to a second prism, through which it was refracted onto a second board. What began as ordinary white light was thus dispersed through two prisms? Newton's 'crucial experiment' demonstrated that a selected color leaving the first prism could not be separated further by the second prism. The selected beam remained the same color, and its angle of refraction was constant throughout. Newton

concluded that white light is a 'Heterogeneous mixture of differently refrangible Rays' and that colors of the spectrum cannot themselves be individually modified, but are 'Original and connate properties. 'The Opticks of 1704, which first appeared in English, is Newton's most comprehensive and readily accessible work on light and color. In Newton's words, the purpose of the Opticks was 'not to explain the Properties of Light by Hypotheses, but to propose and prove them by Reason and Experiments.' Divided into three books, the Opticks moves from definitions, axioms, propositions, and theorems to proof by experiment. A subtle blend of mathematical reasoning and careful observation, the Opticks became the model for experimental physics in the 18th century. Newton showed that the Spectrum was too long to be explained by the accepted theory of the bending (or Refraction) of light by dense media. The old theory said that all rays of white light striking the prism at the same angle would be equally refracted. These discoveries led Newton to the logical, but erroneous, conclusion that telescopes using refracting lenses could never overcome the distortions of chromatic dispersion. He therefore proposed and constructed a reflecting telescope (see Telescope, Optical), the first of its kind, and the prototype of the largest modern optical telescopes. In 1671 he donated an improved version to the Royal Society of London, the foremost scientific society of the day. Newton's Opticks appeared the following year. It dealt with the theory of light and color and with Newton's investigations of the colors of thin sheets, of "Newton's rings," and of the phenomenon

of diffraction of light.

Pr oj ecti les & Pl anets

Let us now turn to the central topic of the Principia, the universality of the gravitational force. The legend is that Newton saw an apple fall in his garden in Lincolnshire, thought of it in terms of an attractive gravitational force towards the earth, and realized the same force might extend as far as the moon. He was familiar with Galileo's work on projectiles, and suggested that the moon's motion in orbit could be understood as a natural extension of that theory. To see what is meant by this, consider a gun shooting a

projectile horizontally from a very high mountain, and imagine using more and more powder in successive shots to drive the projectile faster and faster. The parabolic paths would become flatter and flatter, and, if we imagine that the mountain is so high that air resistance can be ignored, and the gun is sufficiently powerful, eventually the point of landing is so far away that we must consider the curvature of the earth in finding where it lands. In fact, the real situation is more dramatic---the earth's curvature may mean the projectile never lands at all. This was envisioned by Newton in the Principia. The following diagram is from his later popularization, A Treatise of the System of the World, written in the 1680's: The mountaintop at V is supposed to be above the earth's atmosphere, and for a suitable initial speed, the projectile orbits the earth in a circular path. In fact, the earth's curvature is such that the surface falls away below a truly flat horizontal line by about five meters in 8,000 meters (five miles). Recall that five meters is just the vertical distance an initially horizontally moving projectile will fall in the first second of motion. But this implies that if the (horizontal) muzzle velocity were 8,000 meters per second, the downward fall of the cannonball would be just matched by the earth's surface falling away, and it would never hit the ground! This is just the motion, familiar to us now, of a satellite in a low

orbit, which travels at about 8,000 meters (five miles) a second, or 18,000 miles per hour. (Actually, Newton drew this mountain impossibly high, no doubt for clarity of illustration. A satellite launched horizontally from the top would be far above the usual shuttle orbit, and go considerably more slowly than 18,000 miles per hour.) Newton realized that the moon's circular path around the earth could be caused in this way by the same gravitational force that would hold such a cannonball in low orbit, in other words, the same force that causes bodies to fall. Moon's motion, beginning at some particular instant, as deviating downwards from some initial "horizontal" line, just as for the cannonball shot horizontally from a high mountain. The first question is: does the moon fall five meters below the horizontal line, that is, towards the earth, in the first second? This was not difficult for Newton to check, because the path of the moon was precisely known by this time. The moon's orbit is approximately a circle of radius about 384,000 kilometers (240,000 miles), which it goes around in a month (to be precise, in 27.3 days), so the distance covered in one second is, conveniently, very close to one kilometer. It is then a matter of geometry to figure out how far the curved path falls below a "horizontal" line in one second of flight, and the answer turns out to be not five meters, but only a little over one millimeter! (Actually around 1.37 millimeters.) Thus the "natural acceleration" of the moon towards the earth, measured by how far it falls below straight line motion in one second, is less than

that of an apple here on earth by the ratio of five meters to 1.37 millimeters, which works out to be about 3,600. What can be the significance of this much smaller rate of fall? Newton's answer was that the natural acceleration of the moon was much smaller than that of the cannonball because they were both caused by a force---a gravitational attraction towards the earth, and that the gravitational force became weaker on going away from the earth.

Th e Gr eat Co ns erv atio n Laws

A lot of very profound physics is encapsulated in the so-called conservation laws, which are statements that certain quantities are `conserved' (unchanging in total) in isolated systems. We have encountered this twice before, once in my discussion of how the conservation of energy explains the fact that stars are hot, and again when I explained how the conservation of angular momentum explained the stability of the spin of the Earth. The time is now right, however, to explore the issue a little more deeply.

In Newton's time, the concept of the conservation laws was not as developed as nowadays, so this perspective is not one that Newton had fully available to him. In modern terminology, we believe that the following quantities are conserved in a closed system (that is, one in which no external influences or forces intrude):

The total linear momentum (to be defined below) The total angular momentum The total electrical charge The total energy The total mass

I demonstrated some of this in class. Consider, for instance, the conservation of energy. If I lift a piece of chalk above the table, I have done some work against gravity (my muscles have expended some stored chemical energy by burning up sugars and other fuels). My virtue of its new position, the chalk now possesses some "gravitational potential energy." When I drop it, the potential energy vanishes, or rather is converted to kinetic energy, the energy of motion. When the chalk hits the table, its directed motion stops but the total energy is still conserved; it goes into the heating of the table (the impact makes the atoms jiggle around more vigorously) and the noise, which you hear (the impact jiggles the atoms in the air, and this disturbance spreads out as a sound and rattles your eardrums). Let us turn now to linear momentum, which is, as

the name implies, a measure of the momentum (a word which may have some intuitive meaning for you) carried by an object moving along some particular direction, or line, of motion. In fact, the amount of linear momentum an object carries is given by its total mass times its speed of motion. Again, this equation is sterile on its own; so let us think of some applications. In a football game, stopping a fullback from crossing the goal line is more difficult if he is moving at speed, with a good deal of momentum, and there is an obvious advantage if the fullback is a large (massive) player rather than someone of very slight build. Likewise, we all know that a baseball thrown at ninety miles an hour carries more ``punch'' than a ping-pong ball moving at the same speed. In a sense, it is as though you were to ask how much damage a moving object could do if it should be involved in a collision. Interestingly, there are two ways to quantify this ``punch'' (or, if you prefer, this "ability to do significant damage"). One is to consider the kinetic energy (the energy of motion) of the body; the other, which is not the same, is to consider the linear momentum. Why two different ways? It turns out that the conservation of linear momentum is intimately related to Newton's Second Law, while the conservation of energy has very broad-reaching implications in a host of physical situations. Those of you who have taken physics courses know that some types of problems are more easily solved by considering the energetic; in other problems, considering the momentum may be the key to a quick solution. (No matter what your approach, of course, you should get the same answer.) In general,

some thoughtful consideration of both these components together -- the energy and the momentum -- provides deep insights into physical behavior.

I demonstrated this in the lecture with a device, which has a row of billiard balls hanging on strings, a desktop executive toy often seen in stores and offices. The simplest way to use such a toy is to pull back and then release a single ball at one end. It swings forward and hits the remaining unmoving balls, of which there are typically half-a-dozen. A single ball immediately flies off the other end, and rises up to about the same height as the original ball was pulled back (which implies that it flies off with just about the speed the original ball had). That seems, in some intuitive sense, to be just what you would expect. So far so good. But what happens when two balls are dropped together at one end? The answer is that we always get two balls coming off the other end. Why? Why not one ball with twice the speed? Or four balls with half the speed? As I demonstrated, with the use of some very simple equations, the behavior of the swinging balls before and after impact can be completely understood in terms of the conservation of energy and the conservation of linear momentum. This is a beautiful example of the complete and quantitative predictability inherent in Newtonian physics: there is one uniquely correct way events will unfold from a

given starting situation. Things do not always work out that neatly, by the way! Some physical situations are horrendously more complicated. Think, for instance, of a row of stopped cars at an intersection. If an inattentive motorist runs into the back of the row at high speed, you will not generally see a single car pop off the front of the row with the other cars left sitting there unscathed! The difference is that the cars are designed to absorb some of the energy of the collision by crumpling and breaking apart. (This absorption of energy, seen in its extreme example in racing car accidents, actually protects the occupants by soaking up much of the energy of the collision.) Any calculation of the behaviour would have to take into account all these effects. The billiard-ball executive toy is especially simple in that the resilient balls collide elastically, which means that essentially all of the kinetic energy stays in that form. The balls escape the collision unscathed. A fine example of the conservation of linear momentum is to imagine yourself standing in an unmoving canoe on a placid lake, with a heavy stone held against your chest. Since everything is motionless, there is no linear momentum associated with this system of people and objects. Now fling the stone away from you as fast as you can! Since it is now moving to the right (let us say) with some speed, something else must be moving to the left if the total linear momentum is to be conserved (i.e. if it is still to add up to zero, as it did before). This, of course, is accomplished by the sudden backward motion of you and the canoe -- with the likely result

that you lose your balance and fall into the water. This can equally well be considered from the point of view of Newton's Laws. The First Law reminds us that when you are standing still, you and the stone don't change your state of motion since no unbalanced forces are at play. Suddenly your muscles twitch and apply an unbalanced force to the stone, which is accelerated to the right, in accordance with Newton's Second Law. (The stone is accelerated only as long as you keep pushing on it, applying the unbalanced force; as soon as it leaves your grip, the force vanishes and the stone flies freely through the air.) Meanwhile, Newton's Third Law reminds us that the unbalanced force you applied to the stone is matched by one of equal size acting on yourself but pointing in the opposite direction. This will set you in motion, according to Newton's Second Law. Of course, if you are very massive (or if the canoe is filled with other people and stones), you will not accelerate very much -- but move you will!

How Roc ke ts Wor k

As we will see in the next section, Newton's Laws plus the Law of Universal Gravitation explain how and why the planets orbit the sun as they do. In considering these matters, Newton imagined the way

in which various objects would move if they were to be launched horizontally at high speed from a mountaintop. When we consider such objects orbiting the Earth, one tends inevitably to visualise rockets, such as those used in the space program. This visualisation can be a little misleading, so I want to comment on it in a couple of different ways. The first of these is to consider how rockets actually work. Earlier, we considered an implication of Newton's Third Law: when you do a pushup you actually move the Earth! You push on it, and the reaction force pushes on you, so that you lift up from the surface. The forces are of the same size (``equal and opposite''), so you move more than the Earth itself does (since you are so much less massive: see Newton's Second Law), but in principle both move, even if the Earth's motion is immeasurably small. Now consider a rocket. When most people think of such devices, they visualize: 1. a huge flame and hot gas pouring out the back; and 2. the rocket pushing against the ground or the air, rather in the way that you push the blade of your paddle against the water when you propel a canoe. The first of these aspects is misleading; the second is just plain wrong. The rocket actually works by virtue of Newton's Third Law (or alternatively and equivalently through the Conservation of Linear Momentum). Within the rocket engine, the burning of the fuel heats the gases; this raises the pressure so that

the gases try to expand in all directions. Since there is a nozzle at the back, the gases rush out that way at high speed. The equal and opposite reaction force pushes the rocket the other way. (Alternatively, we can just recognize that the total linear momentum has to be conserved.) The important point is that this would work regardless of the nature of the stuff thrown out the back. You could, for instance, build a little treadmill device to throw bricks out the back and thereby accelerate the rocket the other direction! The reason we use a hot flame is simply that the rocket is accelerated most efficiently if the ejected material moves at high speed, and the burning of liquid fuel heats it so much that the gases come out very fast indeed. So it is merely a matter of efficiency.

The rocket needs nothing to `push against' and will function in the vacuum of space perfectly well. (In the 1920s, by the way, the New York Times published a strident editorial in which they criticised a physics professor who, they said, had completely forgotten his basic physics in even discussing the prospects of future space travel. According to the Times, rockets would never function in the vacuum of space! Events have proven them wrong, of course.) Indeed, rockets benefit from the lack of air resistance, which merely retards their acceleration as they climb away from the Earth's surface. Nor do rockets need to be streamlined, except insofar as it helps get them up out of the Earth's atmosphere with minimal drag. The Space Shuttle looks like

an airplane because that is what it turns into on return to the Earth: it has to use its aerodynamics to glide to a safe landing. But a hundred years from now, it is possible that we may see a manned interstellar spacecraft, built in and launched from the vacuum of near-Earth orbit, which could be shaped like a cauliflower, for all that it matters.