Isaac Newton

The Beginning of Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton, a legendary figure. He was once quoted as saying I can calculate the motions of
the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people. He was a genius, inventor, mathematician,
physicist, astronomer, philosopher, an inspiration.
Isaac Newton was born in Woolsthorpe Manor on the 25th December, 1642-Christmas morning.
He was a premature baby, with a body so small he could fit into a kettle.
Isaacs father (who is also called Isaac Newton), passed away 3 months after little Isaac was
born. His mother, Hannah Ayscough got remarried to a vicar called Barnabas Smith, and went off
to live with him in his parish of North Witham. Isaac was left in the care of his grandmother,
Margery Ayscough.
Being basically treated as an orphan, he did not have a happy childhood. He did once threaten to
burn down the house of his mom and step-dad.
When Isaac was ten, his step-father died and so his mother returned to Woolsthorpe. She brought
quite a lot of money back with her, not to mention three new children. With money to spare, she
sent Isaac to study at a grammar school, which was basically a school where you just learned
grammar and nothing else.
Why the obsession with grammar? Well the true obsession was with Latin grammar, as Latin was
used by the ancient Romans, and though nobody used it in the 1600s, it was still the language
used by all the scholarly types from across the world. This means that if you knew Latin, you
could understand what French, German or Spanish scholars were all up to, which is really
convenient. They learned Greek too, because everything before the Romans was thought up by
clever Greeks, like Aristotle.
Isaac wasnt doing so well in grammar school, as school reports described him as 'idle' and
'inattentive'. But then one day, he got into a fight with a school bully. Deciding that he wouldnt
take any more ill treatment, Isaac beat up the school bully and decided to beat everyone else as
well. Academically, that is.
1661, aged 18, Isaac entered Trinity College Cambridge. Not only was he about two years older
than most of the students, he was also poorer and had to be a sizar. A sizar was a student who
received an allowance toward college expenses in exchange for acting as a servant to other
students. This means that he had to go around cleaning up other students rooms, clearing their
plates and fetching food for them.
Newton graduated in 1665, but was still nothing out of the ordinary, yet.

Isaac Newtons revolutionary advancements

1) Binomial Theorem
The algebraic expansion of powers of a binomial.
The most basic example of the binomial theorem is the formula for the square of x + y.
Isaac Newton found a general formula for solving a binomial, which means he made it so you
could substitute the exponent of the binomial with anything, and be able to solve it.
2) Tangents
Isaac also discovered tangents, which is a straight line that comes into contact with a curve at a
point. Around Isaacss time, everybody was going crazy trying to solve how exactly it is that the
planets and stars moved. They hoped that by using math, they could describe the movement of
the celestial beings and therefore understand what was making them move in the first place.
3) Calculus
The point of calculus is to split things up into smaller and smaller bits until you get a result.
Example: Filling up a circle with a triangle.
There are two types of calculus: integral calculus (calculate areas under graphs) and differential
calculus (calculate gradients).
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, a german mathematician, is also credited as having invented
calculus. Newton derived his results first, but Leibniz published his first. Newton claimed
Leibniz stole ideas from his unpublished notes and got really huffy about it, he had a really bad
temper after all. Though, we actually got the term calculus from Leibniz, as Isaac called them
fluxions.
4) Gravity
So we all know the famous story of how Isaac was sitting under a tree, when an apple fell on his
head. While most people would probably be cursing the apple or eating it, Isaac instead started
wondering Why did the apple fall?
So maybe he thought The apple falls, because everything falls to earth. Suppose the apple tree
grew as high as the moon, would the apple still fall to earth? Why not...But then, why doesnt the
moon fall to earth? Well the moon doesnt fall to earth, but there must be something keeping it in
its place as well. An invisible force of some sortGRAVITAS! (Or gravity as we know it.)
He kept his theories under lock and key because the idea that his ideas were anything but perfect
absolutely freaked him. It took him about 20 years to refine and polish everything before he
published it in one of the most famous scientific books of all time-Principia.

Principia
In the book Principia, Isaac introduced Newtons Law of Motions.
First law: Everything stays still, or keeps moving in a straight line at the same speed unless a
force makes it change.
Ex: When a car speeds up and you feel yourself getting pushed back. When it suddenly brakes,
there would be no force to stop you from moving and you would be thrown forward. Thats what
seatbelts are for, to prevent you from bashing your head in.
Second law: The change in motion depends on how strong the force is.
Force= Mass x Acceleration, as we will very soon learn in physics.
The unit of force is Newton, in recognition of Isaacs vast contributions to the field.
Third Law: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
For example, tug-of-war. If the teams have equal force, the rope doesnt move. But if one side
lets go, the other side would immediately fall backwards from their own pulling force.
5) Colours
Isaac was curious about colours and also did various experiments on them.
One pretty gruesome thing he did was to stick a pointed stick into his eye socket and wiggle it as
far back as it could go. This caused him to see several coloured circles, and make him wonder
where the colour came from. I dont advise trying this experiment at home though. He also spent
hours staring directly at the sun to see what effect it would have. He almost went blind and had
to stay several days in a dark room before his eyesight returned.
Isaac let a beam of sunlight hit a prism. The prism projected a beautiful spectrum of the colours
of the rainbow on the wall. This boggled Isaac, as up till then, everybody thought that white light
was pure and didnt consist of any other colours. But in that case, how had all the colours come
from one beam of sunlight? Isaac discovered that each colour by itself is pure and white light is
actually the mixture.
Though a rather rudimentary telescope was already designed by Galileo, Isaac used his findings
to improve on the telescope design by using mirrors to reflect the light instead of lens. His
telescope could magnify up to 40 times an objects size, which at the time was really spectacular.

Isaacs prestigious posts

Lucasian professor:
It was created in 1663, and is one of the most respected jobs in the world. Its been almost 360
years since it started, yet there have only been 17 Lucasian professors. The current Lucasian
professor is Stephen Hawking.
Royal Society:
Founded in 1660, and is still going strong till this day. Full name The Royal Society for the
Promotion of Natural Knowledge. Isaac was elected to join and everybody was awed by his
works. In the end, he even became President of the Royal Society.
The end of a great mans legacy.
Issac Newton died in his sleep in 20 March 1727.
His endless curiosity had led him to make many discoveries and inventions that can only be
described as beneficial to mankind.
According to the carved Latin script on his tomb in Westminster Abbey, Isaac Newton might just
be the greatest man that ever lived. "Mortals rejoice," It reads, "that there has existed such and so
great an ornament of the human race!
Surely a ridiculous level of praise, even for a man as great as Isaac! Or is it? You decide.