Isaac Newton and Physics for Kids: His Life and Ideas with 21 Activities
PREFACE THE BRILLIANT AND BIZARRE ISAAC NEWTON SS SAAC NEWTON HATED to count sheep every day every week over and over again In his tiny village of Woolsthorpe England in the 1650s losing your sheep meant losing your way of making a living But Isaac didn't care Raising sheep was boring He'd rather read one of the books lining the shelves in the house where he lived with his mother and grandparents He knew he was different He didn't feel like the other boys who were growing up to become farmers in Woolsthorpe Isaac Newton saw things in a unique way Isaac saw patterns He saw the rhythm of every day life sunrise to sunset spring to summer to autumn to winter He saw patterns as the sun moon and stars steadily marched overhead He couldn't touch anything up there but still he wondered whether heavenly bodies moved according to the same rules that worked down
Isaac built tiny windmills water clocks sundials and kites and saw patterns in how wind water and the sun made them work Through his own eyes and the touch of his fingers the boy sensed that the uni verse both Earth and sky were one and the same Isaac started to suspect that a universal something makes things go When Isaac Newton was a boy people were just starting to give up the idea that the sun moon and stars revolved around the earth At school during the week and in church on Sundays Isaac might have heard that God had set the earth and the humans on it in the middle of the universe Only a bold few far away from Woolsthorpe questioned the core belief that the earth lay in the center of it all By the time Isaac started at university this geo centric Earth centered view of the cosmos had changed But like every university student Isaac still studied the classics especially the ancient Greeks Greek thinkers rarely questioned geocentrism Aris totle foremost of the Greek philosophers believed that the moon sun and stars all journeyed around the earth in their own crystal spheres Aristotle taught that nothing beyond the sphere of the moon ever changed What was more Isaac's professors agreed with Aristotle Aristotle didn't think of the universe as a single unit Instead he thought that the cosmos was divided in two parts up there and down
Up there it was perfect Down here things were messy Never were Earth and the heavens to work as One But as Isaac Newton grew to manhood he dared to question Aristotle's worldview Newton studied the writings of Greek Islamic and medieval thinkers He pondered the celestial patterns described by Renaissance astronomers such as Nicolaus Coperni cus Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei He asked why things like apples always fall down when they fall out of trees Then Isaac Newton became the first person to pull this thinking into one elegant pattern and make sense of it all Isaac Newton was a natural philosopher what we generally call a scientist or physicist As Newton studied the system of the world his physics became the crown jewel of the Scientific Revolution During this era of change from about 1500 to 1700 people learned to make observations do experiments and develop a formal method to test why things are the way they are Isaac Newton detected a set of laws simple but elegant that linked up there with down here Of that discovery was born one of the most influential books of all time Newton's Principia Mathematical or the Mathematical Principles of the Natural Philosophy Yes Isaac Newton was curious and a curiosity to
others There was a lot to admire about him and much to despise Many downright disliked him In truth England's most brilliant natural philoso pher was a very odd man Newton's enormous ability to concentrate kept him working for months with nearly no food and next to no sleep In a few short years he made astounding discoveries in physics astronomy optics and mathematics and never told a soul The inner life of Sir Isaac Newton is still puzzling Only Isaac Newton truly knew what orbited in his own head Isolated snobbish and jealous Newton could hold a grudge for a lifetime and he did Until later in life he had few friends At times he resented his mother hated his stepfather and even thought about ways to destroy their house With such a bitter attitude Newton could have failed at everything Instead Isaac Newton went fur ther in his thinking than anyone else in his genera tion He asked How can I explain that the heavens and the earth move according to the same simple plan Isaac Newton asked the big questions And he found the
