Newton's AppleAt the age of 23, while relaxing on his mother's farm one day, Isaac Newton, by his own account, saw an apple falling from a tree. This simple incident caused him to wonder why apples always tumbled down. Why had an apple fallen to earth while the pale August moon continued to sail contentedly overhead?
Newton astutely theorized that the same (gravitational) force in fact acted on apple and moon alike, albeit with an intensity falling exponentially with increasing distance (in the same way that light dissipates as it travels away from its source). Indeed, Newton's simple observation soon led to his formulation of the law of universal gravitation.
[The moon continues to sail contentedly overhead because one (perpendicular) component of its motion carries it along in its orbit as it falls. In lay terms it does not 'fall' fast enough.]
[Trivia: The famed mathematician Wolfgang Bolyai decreed that no monument should stand
over his grave apart from an apple-tree, in memory of the three apples: the two
of Eve and Paris, which made hell out of earth, and that of Newton, which
elevated the earth again into the circle of the heavenly bodies. (F. Cajori, History of Mathematics)]
Newton, Sir Isaac (1642-1727) English physicist and mathematician, President of the Royal Society (from 1672), Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University (1689) [noted for his development of calculus; for his formulation of the law of universal gravitation and the three laws of motion underlying classical mechanics; and for such seminal scientific works as Principia Mathematica (1686-87) and Optics(1704)]
[Sources: aticourses.com/news/apple.htm]More Sir Newton anecdotesRelated Anecdote Keywords:
Physics Science Serendipity Gravity Inspiration 17th Century
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