chapter 12
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bsyx0428Ⅰ Warming up
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Ⅱ Let’s Read
Sir Isaac Newton had a humble beginning. Born prematurely in 1643 to a farmer's widow, who noted that the
immensely tiny infant could fit inside a quart mug, he survived-the first among many surprises with which he
would stun the world. He was reared in the English countryside and quickly proved himself a precocious student.
After attempting farming briefly in his late teens, Newton permanently returned to academia to pursue
mathematics and science.
Newton attended Trinity College in Cambridge, where he was exposed to traditional ideas and where he also
extensively read texts from innovative thinkers like Descartes, Galileo, and Kepler. During the remainder of his
career, Newton would make unprecedented contributions to mathematics, optics, and mechanical physics. His ideas
would become the foundations of modern science and would stand unrevised for nearly two centuries.
His most influential work is Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural
Philosophy), which he published in 1687 at the age of 44. In this work, he presented detailed mathematical
descriptions of the motions and forces affecting objects in the world. One of the most impressive aspects was
that these mathematical formulae applied to all objects and could describe the motion of everything from apples to
asteroids. The Principia, as this work is often called, provides three basic laws to describe all motion in the
universe.
Newton's first law, called the law of inertia, states that if the total force on an object equals zero, then it will
continue in its current state of rest or motion. Thus, for instance, if a stone is motionless, it will remain
motionless until an outside force acts upon it, such as the wind or a foot kicking it. Furthermore, if a rock is
flying through the air, say, because it was thrown, then it will continue at the same speed indefinitely unless
another force acts upon it, such as gravity or air friction. Of course, in the real world, there is always a force to
act upon a moving object.
Newton's second law, called the law of acceleration, states that the acceleration of an object is equal to the total
force acting on the object divided by its mass. Likewise, it can be said that the total force acting on an object is
equal to its mass times its acceleration. This means, for instance, that if a person kicks a rock twice as hard,
then it will go twice as fast. Or, if a person kicks a rock against the wind, then the acceleration of the rock will
depend on the force of the kick minus the force of the wind.
Newton's third law, called the law of reciprocal actions, states that every action has an equal and opposite
reaction. For instance, suppose two billiard balls are traveling directly at each other at five miles per hour. After
they collide, they will each be moving five miles per hour in the opposite direction.
These laws had huge implications for gravity. For instance, according to Newton's third law, a rock falling
toward the Earth is also exerting a gravitational pull on the Earth. This gravitational pull is so miniscule that it is
negligible. However, for larger objects, such as the moon, this reciprocal effect is not negligible, as can be seen
from the ocean tides. Newton was also able to demonstrate Kepler's laws of planetary motion based on his own
general laws of motion. The orbits of the planets, with the properties identified by Kepler some 70 years earlier,
could be described from the ground up using the planets' masses, accelerations, and the gravitational attractions of
the sun.
As we now know, these laws begin to divorce from reality when we examine extremely large or extremely
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small objects. These problems motivated new theories in the twentieth century that are still being elaborated,
refined, and harmonized. The newer theories are extremely technical, for instance, involving as many as eleven
dimensions, instead of the conventional three dimensions plus time. For those who are not scientists, Newton’s
laws are still an elegant tool for describing motion in the world.
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