blog




  • Essay / Isaac Newton and his achievements during the plague years

    Table of contentsIntroductionNewton's law of gravityNewton's theory of calculusWork with prisms and lightConclusionIntroductionIsaac Newton, born December 25, 1642 in Lincolnshire, was a mathematician, astronomer and English physicist. Newton's father was a wealthy farmer who died three months before his birth. Newton's mother remarried when he was three, leaving him with his grandmother to care for him. At the age of fourteen, Newton's mother decided he should become a farmer, which interrupted his education. Newton obeyed his mother's wishes until one of his uncles convinced Newton that it was time for him to return to school. Without this uncle's advice, Newton might never have had the courage to go against his mother's wishes to return to school. Without his education, his legacy might not be the same because he might not have had the opportunities that he had. Returning to school, Newton attended the University of Cambridge Trinity College, where his uncle was a graduate. Newton's early years at college consisted of waiting tables and taking care of the rooms of the wealthier students. During his first three years of college, he took the required standard courses, but his mind was more interested in advanced science. Newton spent his free time trying to learn as much as possible about science, because he was not learning it in his classes. His performance in his classes wasn't the best, but that would have been expected since he was more interested and focused on the curriculum he was learning outside of his classes. The bubonic plague arrived in Europe in 1665, causing the university to send its students home, this closure of the university lasted for two years. During his time on the farm, this is where Newton excelled in being able to focus on the things he wanted to learn and pursue. These years are known as Newton's annus mirabilis, the phrase simply meaning "a remarkable or remarkable year" (Merriam-Webster). Newton's annus mirabilis was not an exaggeration; It was at this time that most of Newton's work dates from, notably his theory of gravity, which laid the foundations of calculation, and his work on the prism. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayNewton's Law of GravityNewton's Law of Gravity doesn't show anything new about Newton that we didn't already know, but The way he made his discovery is shocking. Legend has it that Newton was sitting by an apple tree at his home in Lincolnshire where he saw an apple fall from a tree. This apple got Newton thinking about why things always fall straight down, never in any other direction. He believed that the power of gravity could extend beyond Earth. Being so intrigued, Newton immediately began trying to understand why this was always the case. Newton assumed that there was a force between all objects that did not require contact and acted at a distance (Dr. Stern 2016). Knowing the same force that caused the apple to fall to the ground and the movement of the moon around the Earth, he would be able to use things he already knew. Newton began by discovering that the Moon has an acceleration 1/3,600 times less than the square of the Earth's radius (Faller 2019). Calculation of circular orbital motion of radius (R) and period (T) requiring an inward acceleration (A) which should be equal to the product of 4(pi)^2. This gave him the formula A=(4pi^2R)/(T^2). Then Newton used the facts he knew aboutthe Moon's orbit over Earth to find the Moon's inward acceleration per day, (1/60)^2 of the acceleration relative to an object falling to Earth. In his theory, he realized that each particle gravitationally attracts all other particles. Newton related this to both accelerations, of the Moon and of an object falling to the ground on Earth. Newton learned that gravitational force must depend on mass. Newton knew that an object with mass experiencing a force had acceleration = F/M, this must have been Galileo's consistent idea that all objects fell to Earth at the same speed (Faller 2019). Newton proposed the formula for force, F=(G(M1)(M2))/R; G representing the universal constant of gravitational force, M1 and M2 representing the masses of two objects, and R being the radius of the distance between the two objects (Faller 2019). In simpler terms, Newton's law of gravitation says that the downward acceleration of an object toward the surface is equal to the product of the universal gravitational force and the mass of the Earth divided by the radius of the Earth . Newton may not have discovered all this on his way home from Cambridge during the plague years, but it was there that the idea to pursue this path was given to him. Since the idea came to him at home, away from school, during the plague, it can be said that without the plague, Newton might never have pursued this discovery, attributing to his annus mirabilis the fact that she was not an exaggeration and the origin of this work. Newton's theory of calculusDuring the plague years, Newton constructed his own theory of calculus. This is a very controversial topic for many as to who truly invented calculus, the debate comes down to Newton and Leibniz, depending on what you consider "inventing" will give many people different opinions. His theory was motivated by other great thinkers who came before him. Newton started with the problem that the slopes of curves varied constantly and that it was very difficult to give the slope at any given point on the curve. Newton was able to propose the derivative function, f'(x), this derivative function was able to give the slope at any given point on the curve (Mastin 2020). Newton called this method the method of fluxions because he called the rate of change at a given point on a curve a fluxion. Newton not only proposed differentiation but also integration. He called integration a “method of mastery” (Mastin 2020). In Newton's fundamental theorem of calculus, he states that differentiation and integration are inverses of each other. He proved them to be inverses by showing that if you take the derivative of a function and then it becomes integral, you will get the original function you started with; this can also be done in reverse order and will still work. Newton used integrals to find the area under a curve, the area between the curve and the x-axis. The general formula for integrating a generic function is f(x)=x^y or (x^(y+1))/(y+1). The formula becomes more complicated for the function you are looking at, but Isaac Newton was nevertheless able to show that the area under the curve can be obtained using integrals. Newton did not publish his work on calculus right away. This is where the question of who actually invented calculus first comes into play, because Newton only published his work on the subject in 1693, but Leibniz published his nine years earlier (Mastin 2020). Just because Newton didn't publish first doesn't mean he wasn't the first to invent calculus. Newton did not publish his work right away because he feared being criticized for ideas that had never been talked about before, he thought..