Discovering Sir Isaac Newton

The story of Sir Isaac Newton 'discovering gravity' as a result of an apple falling from a tree over his head.

January 4, 1643.

The Scientific Revolution was a movement that took place across Europe throughout the 16th-17th centuries, encouraging individual discovery and critical thinking.

The Scientific Revolution refers to a period of time in history when scientists and philosophers began to focus on understanding the natural world through observation, experimentation, and the development of the scientific method. It is generally considered to have begun with Copernicus's publication of his heliocentric theory in 1543.

Isaac Newton made several major contributions to the Scientific Revolution. He formulated the Three Laws of Motion, which describe the behavior of objects in motion. He also developed the Law of Universal Gravitation, which explains the force of attraction between two objects in space. Additionally, he invented the reflecting telescope and published his groundbreaking work, the 'Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy', which elaborated on his laws of gravity and motion.

Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation states that any two objects in space exert a force on each other that is related to their respective masses and the distance between them. Mathematically, it is expressed as: $F = \frac{{G \cdot m_1 \cdot m_2}}{{R^2}}$, where F is the force of attraction, G is the gravitational constant, m1 and m2 are the masses of the two objects, and R is the distance between them.

The three laws are: 1) An object at rest tends to stay at rest, and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction, unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. 2) The acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the net force applied to it and inversely proportional to its mass. 3) For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Newton's laws of motion provided evidence for a universal understanding of motion, showing that the same patterns observed in planetary movements apply to all motion in the universe.

Newton proved that gravitational force is the reason for the elliptical orbits of the planets, as calculated by Kepler. This conclusively proved the heliocentric model, which states that the planets revolve around the Sun.

The refracting telescope had limitations such as chromatic aberration, which caused distortion around images. Newton invented the reflecting telescope, which uses concave mirrors instead of convex lenses, producing a sharper and more accurate image.