Sir Isaac Newton

Arguably regarded as one of the most brilliant men of all time, Sir Isaac Newton's life work has completely revolutionized modern science and mathematics in a way that we might not have these grand laws and areas of science even today without his extensive work or his constant determination.

"If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention, than to any other talent."-Sir Isaac Newton



Most of Newton's life work was summed up in his great masterpiece, the Philosophić Naturalis Principia Mathematica. This work described his three laws of motion and he devised his law of gravity in this book. I am stunned at how one man, over only one lifetime, could have been able to find so much and then be so correct, according to human minds. And this book vividly describes how he came up with these conclusions. I struggle at how one can even start to come up with the laws and then prove them.

"Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night; God said 'Let Newton be' and all was light."-Alexander Pope



Here is acutally a pretty sophisticated demonstration of Newton's three laws of motion, using Legos.

"I feign no hypotheses."-Sir Isaac Newton



Here is a short video from the Discovery Channel on Youtube about gravity and the planets.

Calculus

Another one of Newton's greatest accomplishments was his help in formulating a new branch of mathematics now known as calculus. Although he was involved in a great controversy with Gottfried Leibniz, his contributions to calculus today are still present. Again, I can hardly imagine how Newton (along with some help) was able to create a whole new branch of math. Sometimes, I have a hard time understanding a particular topic in math, but to discover a whole new branch would for me be extremely daunting. Newton must have had some courage in order to explore math to that degree.



This video shows a little bit about the history of calculus and the feud between Newton and Leibniz

"If I had stayed for other people to make my tools and things for me, I had never made anything."-Sir Isaac Newton

In all, the accomplishments Newton made still have a lasting impact even till today. I marvel at how Newton did everything he did in his lifetime, mostly by himself. I am also amazed at how powerful his work is. We learn, sometimes quickly and easily, the magnificient work that took him a lifetime to create. Thanks to Newton, we know more about our universe than we could have possibly imagined.

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