Scientist of the Day: Sir Isaac Newton

The Secret Side of Sir Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton: The man who changed the world with his scientific & mathematic knowledge

Isaac Newton: «I do not define time, space, place, and motion, as being well known to all»

I do not define time, space, place, and motion, as being well known to all. Only I must observe, that the common people conceive those quantities under no other notions but from the relation they bear to sensible objects. 

And thence arise certain prejudices, for the removing of which it will be convenient to distinguish them into absolute and relative, true and apparent, mathematical and common. 

Sir Isaac Newton

Shoulders of giants

Aναφέρεται στην επιστολή του Sir Isaac Newton, το 1676, προς τον Robert Hooke.

Isaac Newton: «God create everything by number, weight ande measure»

Αν μπορούσατε να κάνετε μια ερώτηση στον Sir Isaac Newton, τι θα ρωτούσατε;

TEDEd: Newton’s three-body problem explained - Fabio Pacucci

Newtons Dark Secrets

An interview on Newton's alchemy with historian Bill Newman.

Χαρτονόμισμα με τον Isaac Newton (Bank of England)

Isaac Newton: «If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants»

The spectrum of light

In 1665, Isaac Newton discovered the spectrum of light by passing a beam of sunlight through a glass prism in his room. He also experimented with his own eyes by inserting a bodkin (a blunt needle) between his eyeball and the bone as far as he could, and pressing his eye with the end of it to observe the effects on his vision.

@PhysInHistory

In 1704, Isaac Newton Predicts the World Will End in 2060

We have become quite used to pronouncements of doom, from scientists predicting the sixth mass extinction due to the measurable effects of climate change, and from religionists declaring the apocalypse due to a surfeit of sin. 

It’s almost impossible to imagine these two groups of people agreeing on anything other than the ominous portent of their respective messages. But in the early days of the scientific revolution—the days of Shakespeare contemporary Francis Bacon, and later 17th century Descartes—it was not at all unusual to find both kinds of reasoning, or unreasoning, in the same person, along with beliefs in magic, divination, astrology, etc.

Read more »

Sir Isaac Newton - Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica

Το Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Μαθηματικές Αρχές της Φυσικής Φιλοσοφίας) του Sir Isaac Newton αποτελεί ένα από τα πιο σημαντικά έργα στην ιστορία της επιστήμης (1687).

Click on image.

How Isaac Newton Discovered the Binomial Power Series

Isaac Newton was not known for his generosity of spirit, and his disdain for his rivals was legendary. But in one letter to his competitor Gottfried Leibniz, now known as the Epistola Posterior, Newton comes off as nostalgic and almost friendly. In it, he tells a story from his student days, when he was just beginning to learn mathematics. 

He recounts how he made a major discovery equating areas under curves with infinite sums by a process of guessing and checking. His reasoning in the letter is so charming and accessible, it reminds me of the pattern-guessing games little kids like to play.

Newton’s method

Στην αριθμητική ανάλυση η μέθοδος του Νεύτωνα (γνωστή και ως μέθοδος Newton-Raphson), είναι μία από τις καλύτερες μεθόδους διαδοχικών προσεγγίσεων για την προσεγγιστική εύρεση των ριζών μιας πραγματικής συνάρτησης.

Αυτή η μέθοδος όταν συγκλίνει, συγκλίνει ιδιαίτερα γρήγορα και πιο συγκεκριμένα τετραγωνικά. Σημαντικός παράγοντας για ύπαρξη σύγκλισης είναι αν η επαναληπτική διαδικασία ξεκινήσει «αρκετά κοντά» στην ζητούμενη λύση. Το πόσο «αρκετά κοντά» στην ρίζα θα πρέπει να βρίσκεται πρώτη προσέγγιση της ρίζας $x_0$, ώστε να υπάρξει σύγκλιση εξαρτάται από το πρόβλημα.

«Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth» - Sir Isaac Newton

Προσέγγιση του $π$

Το 1666, ο Νεύτωνας προσδιόρισε το $π$ με 16 δεκαδικά ψηφία χρησιμοποιώντας $22$ όρους αυτής της σειράς. 

Στη συνέχεια έγραψε: 

«Ντρέπομαι να σας πω σε πόσα νούμερα έκανα αυτούς τους υπολογισμούς, χωρίς να έχω άλλη δουλειά εκείνη τη στιγμή».

(“I am ashamed to tell  you to how many figures I carried these computations, having  no other business at the time.”)

Isaac Newton (1643 - 1727): "Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things"

Newton's method

Newton's method is a root-finding algorithm which produces successively better approximations to the roots of a real-valued function.

Read more »