20 May 2015 Isaac Newton: Life and Achievements Isaac Newton was a legend that had changed the world of science and mathematics. He was born early on Christmas day, 1642. The fact that Isaac was born on Christmas day and was a posthumous child gave him a thought that he is a man on a mission. This thought gave him extreme confidence in his ability. He assumed he was right about his equations, and most of them was. Newton 's ideas were so good that Queen Anne knighted him in 1705 (Christianson 1-2). His accomplishments laid the foundations for modern science and revolutionized the world. Newton once compared himself as a boy: “I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, …show more content…
Book I is about motion involving no friction or resistance. The book begins with eight definitions and three axioms, the latter now known as Newton 's laws of motion (Hatch). Newton’s first law states that every body continues in its state of rest, or uniform motion in a straight line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed on it. This law is also known as the law of inertia. The second law states that the change in motion is proportional to the motive force impressed and is made in the direction of the straight line in which that force is impressed. This law can be expressed in a mathematical formula, F=ma. Newton’s third law states that to every action there is always an opposed and equal reaction (Giancoli 74-78). Whenever a body exerts a force on another body, the second body exerts a force of equal magnitude and opposite direction on the first. These laws lay the foundation for the next two books. No discussion of Newton will not be completed without these …show more content…
The book ended with a proof that the planets cannot be carried around by material vortices (Gleick 133). The final Book of the Principia that most concerns us was entitled Systems of the World. In this book, Newton stated astronomical problems he had been dealing with for years. In this book Newton showed us exactly how the moon orbit the planets and how the planets orbit the sun. This is one of the most extraordinary discovery in the history of science (Boerst 85). According to Newton’s first law, “Every body continues in its state of rest, or uniform motion in a straight line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed on it.” Newton casted this into his own systems of mechanics of the universe. The planets that Newton had demonstrated mathematically, circled around the sun elliptically. Why they do not move off into space in a straight line as the first law stated? This is because Newton’s second law, “The change in motion is proportional to the motive force impressed and is made in the direction of the straight line in which that force is impressed.” This law tells us that the planets are being pulled toward the sun at a 90° angle. Newton coined the word for the force that is pulling the planets and that is “centripetal” force (Christianson