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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.
"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..."
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.
Newton's apple: La historia real
11:30 18 enero 2010
Libros
Amanda Gefter, Editor de libros y artes