This man’s accomplishments defy understanding! How is it possible for one man to make so many world-changing discoveries? Obviously, he’s one of my heroes.
Newton is best known for his laws of motion and universal gravitation. It’s worth stating them each here.
Newton’s Laws of Motion
- A body at rest tends to stay at rest, and one in motion tends to continue moving in a straight line at a constant speed, unless acted upon by an external force.
- At any instant of time, the net force on a body is equal to the rate at which the body’s momentum is changing with time.
- If two bodies exert forces on each other, these forces have the same magnitude and opposite directions.
Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation
Each object attracts every other object with a force that is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers.
By solving lots of physics problems, we can begin to appreciate just how powerful these laws are. They form the foundation of physics. I am particularly impressed with how Newton used them to derive Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.
Newton also studied optics, heat transfer, the speed of sound, and electricity. He generalized the binomial theorem, and made other advances in mathematics.
Leibniz and Newton independently discovered the calculus. Newton used differentiation and integration to solve a large number of physics problems. The Principia, his most famous work, was published in 1687.
Leave a Reply