Rather, he wanted to know how and why heavenly bodies kept their places and moved in the way they did. Newton isn’t renowned for his work as an astronomer, using his telescope simply to observe planets, stars and moons for pleasure or scientific study. This beautiful instrument earned him membership of the Royal Society of London in 1672. Combining these skills with his knowledge of metalwork and carpentry enabled him to make his small but remarkably efficient refracting telescope. Newton taught himself how to grind lenses and polish mirrors to perfection. Newton disproved this with his ‘crucial experiment’, showing the colours are there, combined in the white light, and can be separated and made visible when the glass refracts them by differing degrees. David Loggan print, 1690 (Credit: Public Domain). Newton complained that as often as not, ‘Mr Miller’, as he called the creature, ate the grain he was supposed to be grinding but the model was a considerable achievement, with hand-carved gears and axels.īird’s eye view of Trinity College, Cambridge, with Great Gate and Great Court in the foreground, Nevile’s Court and Wren Library in the background. When a new windmill was under construction in Grantham, Newton observed and built his own working model, powered by a mouse running in a sort of hamster wheel. Lanterns that hung from kites, looking like ghosts in the dark, frightened the locals. Newton’s school fellows were fascinated by some of the toys he made, if not by the intricacies of manufacture. His enthusiasm to explore them would remain throughout his long life. Whatever the shortcomings of these first experiments, they demonstrate how the mechanics of the natural world intrigued him from childhood. Lengths of string could be used to show relative distances jumped, but only he could guesstimate whether the effort he put into each jump was identical so that the wind was the only variable. Of course, he had no means of accurately gauging this, although it’s thought he made a basic anemometer to measure the wind’s force, whether lighter or stronger, if not its precise speed. Newton wasn’t sedentary, however, and wrote about performing some wind-assisted jumping experiments – testing how much the strength of the wind enhanced or impeded the distance jumped. Tune in to find out how it was discovered, the impact it had, and if we could possibly imagine a world without it today. Today we are joined by statistician and author Timandra Harkness, who is going to take us back in time to the invention of zero as a mathematical concept.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |