The Impact of Sir Isaac Newtons’ Discoveries on Science

Sir Isaac Newton was a very important when considering modern day science. He has made many contributions in many fields, mainly physics. In my essay I will explore some of the ideas that Sir Isaac Newton has spoken and studied throughout his life time.

Firstly, I am going to write about his – arguably the most important – understanding of motion or better known as Newton’s laws of motion. These laws are essentially made of three parts: the first law states that ‘Every object in a state of uniform motion will remain in that state of motion unless an external force acts on it.’ This means that if an object is stationary, it will remain stationary unless a force acts upon it. This means that if you kicked a ball it would fly forever unless another force acts upon it, which it does (air resistance and gravity). The second law of gravity is simply that force equals mass times acceleration, which can be written as f=ma. This means that is the mass gets lower the acceleration has to get higher. The third law states that ‘each action has an equal and opposite reaction.’ This law says that for example, if you are kicking a ball, the ball is also pushing back towards you.

Secondly, I am writing about one of Newton’s less known fields of study, Optics. He was the one how first discovered the rainbow and its main colours (red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet.) He experimented with a prism, and wrote many journals and books about this field. In Newton’s time many people believed that colour was a mixture of darkness and light and that prisms coloured light. Newton knew that this theory was not true. He used refraction to prove that all colour originates with pure, white light. Artists were fascinated by Newton’s discoveries and this led to another invention of his, which was an original version of a colour wheel which was later adapted and modified by Claude Boutet. This discovery is almost almost overshadowed by the more ‘important’ discoveries of Newton such as his Universal Laws of Gravity.

Newton’s Law of Universal Gravity can commonly be known as F=Gm1m2/r2. This usually means that every particle attracts every other particle with a force that is directly proportional to their masses. This means that every single thing in this universe is attracted to each other, no matter how small or giant the mass of the objects are. The equation written above is correct but is not written in the correct from given to the fact I am not able to type some of the parts of the equation.

Sir Isaac Newton was also one of the first scientists to suggest that the earth was not in fact completely spherical but instead was an oblate spheriod, which is a sphere but that the poles are squashed and that the equator is “swollen”. This ‘bulge’ can be proven as the distance from the centre of the Earth to the equator is 21 kilometres which is a larger distance that the distance from the centre to one of the poles. In fact, we have recently also discovered that the Earth also has some plasticity which allows it to deform slightly, almost like silly putty, but much less bendable.

Newton also made some discoveries concerning infinitesimal calculus (Isaac Newton Algebra) and also made lots of progress in the speed of sound, and introduced the notion of a Newtonian Fluid. Apart from his scientific discoveries he also devoted lots of his time studying Biblical chronology and alchemy.

Overall, Isaac Newton has affected science in too many ways to count. He studied many fields and contributed to so many essential scientific laws and notion that we could not live without today. The impact Isaac Newton had on science is amazing and has proved useful to many modern scientists and many students like us as well.