Sir Isaac Newton, A Brief History from Celsum Technologies - Instrumentation for rheology, strain gages, pressure transducers, load cells, temperature control, sapphire window optical probes, precision extrusion dies, and much more.

Sir Isaac Newton was born prematurely on Christmas Day in 1642 in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, a small village alongside the Great North Road between Grantham and Stamford. He was sickly and was not expected to survive. His father had died just three months before Newton's birth. Isaac went to the King's School in Grantham, some seven miles to the North, lodging in the town during term time.In 1661, he went up to Trinity College in Cambridge as a poor scholar, having to perform menial tasks for the Fellows to earn his keep. He passed his degree in 1665 without distinction, but returned to Woolsthorpe before taking his MA due to the outbreak of the Great Plague causing the University to close.

At Woolsthorpe Manor during his enforced sojourn, he studied the nature of light and the design of telescopes. He conducted experiments with glass prisms to conclude that sunlight was comprised of component colours, and that each colour refracted differently through glass, which led him to develop the reflecting telescope. He returned to Trinity College as a Fellow in 1667, being appointed in 1669 Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. A falling apple in the orchard at Woolsthorpe had supposedly led Newton to consider whether the force that caused the apple to fall to the Earth was the same force that governed the motion of the Moon around the Earth and of the planets around the Sun. It is thought, however, that this was an explanation provided by Newton himself to conceal the origin of the discovery in his alchemical research. In 1684, Newton surprised Sir Edmund Halley by revealing that he had proved that the force between the planets and the Sun operated according to an inverse square law. Newton's work on viscosity was, by comparison, a mere bagatelle. However, an ideal liquid is still known as a Newtonian liquid, the viscosity of which is the Newtonian viscosity

Woolsthorpe Manor

Woolsthorpe Manor, near Colsterworth, where Newton was born on Christmas Day 1642. In the grounds is a descendent of the apple tree from which a falling apple led him to discover gravity. The first-floor window on the end of the house seen is where Newton conducted some of his experiments with light. The Manor is now owned by The National Trust and is open to visitors in the spring and summer.

The Old King's School in Grantham, where the young Newton was educated. His name can still be seen carved into a windowsill. The School is still very much in use, and permission must be gained from the Headmaster before viewing.

Newton's Laws of Motion:

First Law:

An object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an external force.

Second Law:

When a force is applied to an object, it accelerates.

The acceleration takes place in the direction of the applied force, and is proportional to the magnitude of the force. It is also inversely proportional to the mass of the object. Commonly, this law is stated as:

F = ma

Where F is the force (in Newtons, of course!), m is the mass in kg, and a is the acceleration in metres per second. Note that F and a are vectors.

Third Law:

To every action there exists an equal and opposite reaction.