KNOWING ISAAC NEWTON: So on earth as in heaven Episode # 1
Hi friends, today I want to start a very special series called Knowing Issac Newton: So on earth as in heaven, this series will be dedicated to the life of this famous scientist who changed the history of science with all its theories, every day. to know a new Episode on Newton, now we speak who was saac Newton was born of premature form the 4 of January of 1643 in the bosom of a family farmer in Woolsthorpe Manor, a small village of the county of Lincolnshire, England.
He had a complicated childhood. Three months before her birth her father died and at three years old her mother left him in charge of her grandparents when her new husband refused to raise a stepchild. Newton would not return to his native village until the death of his stepfather in 1653.
During his childhood and youth he was an introverted child, with few friendships and little interest in his studies, although he did not lack intelligence, curiosity and imagination.
At the age of 12, he began studying elementary studies at Grantham Elementary School. In 1661, at 18 years of age, he entered Trinity College at the University of Cambridge to study mathematics under the tutelage of Isaac Barrow.
After his graduation (four years later), Newton would finish completely dedicating himself to the study of mathematics and natural philosophy making transcendental discoveries in the field of calculus (with the development of integral and differential calculus, among other findings), physics ( describing the laws that explain the movement of macroscopic bodies) and optics (with his theory of colors).
Of all his studies and discoveries, he highlights his work "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" (Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica), published in 1687, in which he laid the foundations of modern physics and engineering through his laws of motion and the theory of gravity, marking a before and after in the history of science (nowadays it is still widely considered as the most influential work in the history of physics).
"Newton was the greatest genius that ever existed and also the most fortunate since you can only find once a system that governs the world."
Image source wikipedia
Newton was the first to demonstrate that the natural laws that govern movement on Earth and those that govern the movement of celestial bodies are the same. He is often qualified as the greatest scientist of all time, and his work as the culmination of the scientific revolution. The mathematician and physicist Joseph Louis Lagrange (1736-1813), said that "Newton was the greatest genius that existed and also the most fortunate, since only one system can be found once that governs the world."
First contributions
From the end of 1664 he worked intensively on different mathematical problems. He then addressed the binomial theorem, based on the works of John Wallis, and developed a method of his own called calculation of fluxions. Shortly after he returned to the family farm because of an epidemic of bubonic plague.
Retired with his family between 1665 and 1666, he experienced a very intense period of discoveries, among which the law of the inverse of the square of distance in gravitation, his development of the bases of classical mechanics, the formalization of the method of fluxiones and the generalization of the binomial theorem, also showing the physical nature of the colors. However, he remained silent for a long time about his discoveries due to the fear of criticism and the theft of his ideas. In 1667 he resumed his studies at the University of Cambridge.
Development of the calculation
From 1667 to 1670 he undertook research on optics and was elected fellow of Trinity College. In 1669, his mentor, Isaac Barrow, renounced his Lucasiana Chair of mathematics, position in which Newton would succeed him until 1696. The same year he sent John Collins, through Barrow, his Analysis per aequationes infinite terminorum number. For Newton, this manuscript represents the introduction to a powerful general method, which he would develop later: his differential and integral calculus.
Newton had discovered the principles of his differential and integral calculus around 1665-1666 and, during the next decade, he developed at least three different approaches to his new analysis.
Newton and Leibniz staged a bitter controversy about the authorship of the development of this branch of mathematics. The historians of science consider that both developed the calculation independently, although the notation of Leibniz was better and the formulation of Newton was better applied to practical problems. The controversy further divided the British and continental mathematicians. However, this separation was not so deep that Newton and Leibniz stopped exchanging results.
Newton approached the development of the calculation from the analytical geometry developing a geometric and analytical approach of the applied mathematical derivatives on curves defined through equations. Newton was also looking for how to square different curves, and the relationship between square and tangent theory. After Roberval's studies, Newton realized that the tangent method could be used to obtain the instantaneous velocities of a known trajectory. In his first investigations Newton deals only with geometric problems, such as finding tangents, curvatures and areas using the analytical geometry of Descartes as a mathematical basis. However, with the desire to separate his theory from that of Descartes, he began to work only with the equations and their variables without having to resort to the Cartesian system.
After 1666 Newton abandoned his mathematical works, and felt increasingly interested in the study of nature and the creation of his Principia.
Works on light
His experiments on the nature of light led him to formulate his general theory about it, which, according to him, is made up of corpuscles and propagates in a straight line and not by means of waves. The book in which he presented this theory was severely criticized by most of his contemporaries, among them Hooke (1635-1703) and Huygens, who held different ideas defending a wave nature. These criticisms caused his distrust of the publications, so he retired to the solitude of his study in Cambridge.
In 1704, Newton wrote his most important work on optics, Opticks, in which he expounded his earlier theories and the corpuscular nature of light, as well as a detailed study of phenomena such as refraction, reflection and scattering of light.
Although their ideas about the corpuscular nature of light were soon discredited in favor of wave theory, current scientists have come to the conclusion (thanks to the works of Max Planck and Albert Einstein) that light has a dual nature: it is wave and corpuscle at the same time. This is the basis on which all quantum mechanics is based.
Law of universal gravitation
Newton's Principia
Bernard Cohen states that "The culminating moment of the Scientific Revolution was the discovery made by Isaac Newton of the law of universal gravitation." With a simple law, Newton hinted at the most important physical phenomena of the observable universe, explaining Kepler's three laws.
The laws of dynamics
Another of the topics dealt with in the Principia were the three laws of the dynamics or laws of Newton, in which he explained the movement of bodies as well as their effects and causes. These are:
Newton's first law or law of inertia
Every body will remain in its state of rest or uniform and rectilinear movement unless it is forced by external forces to change its state.
In this law, Newton states that a body on which external forces do not act (or those that act cancel each other) will remain at rest or moving at a constant speed.
This idea, which had already been enunciated by Descartes and Galileo, supposed to break with the Aristotelian physics, according to which a body only stayed in movement while a force acted on it.
Newton's second law or law of interaction and force
The change of motion is proportional to the external driving force and occurs according to the straight line along which that force is printed.
This law explains the conditions necessary to modify the state of movement or rest of a body. According to Newton these modifications only take place if there is an interaction between two bodies, entering or not in contact (for example, gravity acts without physical contact).
The third law of Newton or law of action-reaction
With all action always occurs an equal and opposite reaction; the mutual actions of two bodies are always the same and directed in opposite directions.
This law is constantly reflected in nature: you have a sensation of pain when hitting a table, since the table exerts a force on you with the same intensity; the impulse that a swimmer achieves when exerting a force on the edge of the pool, being the force that drives the reaction of the edge to the force that he is exerting.
Newton invented a universal scientific method, established four rules that were indicated in the Principia and aimed at scientific reasoning which are:
1 . We must admit that no more causes of natural things, for example, are not true and sufficient to explain their aspects.
2 . The same natural effects must be assigned to the same causes.
3 . The qualities of bodies should be estimated as universal
Four . The issues that are deduced by the observation of phenomena must be considered exact, until other phenomena contradict them.
He used these four rules to solve day-to-day problems, but he always saw his rules for reasoning in the future, so he really described how they can be applied to the solution of a given problem. This analytical method that the invention goes far beyond the philosophical approaches that had Aristotle and Aquinas. This refined Galileo's experimental method, creating the compositional method of experimentation that is still used today. The analysis of the method of composition consists in making experiments and observations, and in the drawing of general conclusions of them by induction, for this we observe that in the analysis we can find compounds to the ingredients, and the movements of force that produce it , as well as, effects and their causes, and from particular causes to more general ones. This is the method of analysis and the Synthesis is that if it is assumed that the discovered causes will establish the principles and the phenomena that precede them, they prove the explanations.
Bibliography
- Ball, W.W. Rouse (1908). A Short Account of the History of Mathematics. New York: Dover. ISBN 0-486-20630-0.
- Casini, Paolo. The machine universe. Origins of Newtonian philosophy, Barcelona, M. Roca, 1971 (1969).
Christianson, Gale E .. In the Presence of Creator, Isaac Newton and His Times. The Free Press, 1984 ISBN 0-02-905190-8. Translation: Newton, Barcelona, Salvat - Great Biographies, 1987 (2 vols.) ISBN 84-345-8244-9 and ISBN 84-345-8245-7
Cohen, I. Bernard. The Newtonian Revolution, Madrid, Alliance, 1983 (or 1980)
Craig, John (1958). «Isaac Newton - Crime Investigator». Nature 182 (4629): 149-152. Bibcode: 1958Natur.182..149C. doi: 10.1038 / 182149a0.
Craig, John (1963). «Isaac Newton and the Counterfeiters». Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 18 (2): 136-145. doi: 10.1098 / rsnr.1963.0017. - Gardner, Martin. Isaac Newton, alchemist and fundamentalist. In: Did Adam and Eve Have Navels ?: Debunking - ---
Pseudoscience, W.W. Norton, 2001 ISBN 0-393-04963-9. Translation: Did they have a navel Adam and Eve ?, Barcelona, Debate, 2001