Isaac Newton and His Three Laws of Motion

Time and time again, the evolution of math continues to expand. Since the mid 1600’s, there have been many math scholars, but not one comes in comparison with Sir Isaac Newton. Newton was a very influential person in life, and at work. Isaac Newton, was born on Christmas Day in 1642 in Wools Thorpe, Lincolnshire. Newton was born prematurely, following his biological father’s death, and was not expected to survive. Soon after Newton’s birth, his mother married another man, who didn’t seem to be too fond of him. To avoid any confusion, Newton was sent away to live with his grandmother. 11 years later, Newton’s stepfather passes away, and he decided to move back home. Beginning around age 12, he was enrolled at King's School in Grantham but, this was only momentarily. In 1658, after his mom being widowed again, his mother returned to their hometown, withdrew him from school so he could become a farmer. Around the age of sixteen, he dropped out of school to do some trade work on his mother's farm.

In school, Newton started off with a slow start in school, but the phase shortly ended when Newton got well into his studies and was head of class. Newton was gifted and talented, always taking full advantage of his skills. After only completing half of his course at King's School, it became obvious farming was the job for him. At age 16 Newton drops out of school to do farm work. At the age of 19, Newton entered Trinity College, in Cambridge. After receiving his bachelor's degree in 1665, Newton stayed at Trinity to earn his master's degree. However, that same year a plague broke out so the college had to close. When it reopened, Newton went back to Wools Thorpe for the rest of the school term.

In 1667, Newton returning to Cambridge and quickly completed all his requirements for a master's degree. His greatest discoveries and innovations came about during his years at Cambridge. Newton was the one to formulate the theory of universal gravity. Watching an apple fall from a tree, he began to question that if the force that caused that the apple to fall, was the same force that kept the moon in its orbit. Newton’s theory he described in his law, is that gravitational force depends on the mass of each object. Newton didn’t doubt if gravity existed, but if it was the pull of gravity that keeps moon in its orbit. Newton wondered if this was the same force responsible for other motions in earth and space and with his studies he decided to call this theory universal gravitation. Enduring many trials and errors Newton’s calculation couldn’t match his theories. After Newton finally figured out his error, which was that he had been using the wrong formula for the diameter of the Earth. To make since of all his studies, Isaac Newton created the three laws of motion.

Firstly, Newton’s first law of motion is an object tends to stay in the state they are in, unless another force is acted upon it. This law is also known as the law of inertia. When an object is in motion it would like to keep moving forever, but in reality it stops. It stops for various reasons such as air, the surface on which it traveling, gravity, and it may hit an obstacle. Therefore, that is why in space, any object would keep moving on forever because there is nothing there to stop it from moving. This is why many scientists call inertia, laziness because an object is too lazy to start moving or even too lazy to stop moving. To overcome the inertia of an object you would have to apply an unbalanced force. Moreover, Newton’s first law of motion describes how objects tend to keep doing what they are doing.

Additionally, Newton’s second law of motion determines the relationship between force, mass, and acceleration. In other words, force is the product of mass acceleration. In order for an object to speed up a force has to be applied; the more force you apply, the faster you accelerate. Also, the amount of force you exert is also dependent on the amount of mass an object has. For instance, the more mass an object has, the more force you would have to use to move that object. The mathematical equation for force is F=ma. The force is always measured in newton’s, which was named after Isaac Newton. One newton is equivalent to one kilogram times one meter per second per second. The mass is always going to be measured in kilograms and the acceleration will always be measured in m/s². Therefore, Newton’s second law of motion is that in order to find force you multiply the object’s mass by the object’s acceleration.

Finally, Newton’s third and final law of motion is, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For example, think of when you drop a ball on the floor. The action is when the ball hits the floor and it causes a downward force on the floor and the reaction is when the floor pushes the ball back up. The mass of the objects do not matter because they will balance out and have the same force towards each other. For instance, the earth and the moon have the same gravitational force towards each other because of Newton’s third law, even though the earth is obviously heavier. Hence, Newton’s third law of motion is every action has an equal and opposite reaction where mass is not important.

These 3 laws seem to be the foundation of gravity, and why Isaac Newton is such a unique philosopher.