Upon learning that Newton had mathematically worked out the elliptical paths of celestial bodies, Halley urged him to organize his notes. In 1684, English astronomer Edmund Halley paid a visit to the secluded Newton. In the following years, he returned to his earlier studies on the forces governing gravity and dabbled in alchemy. Known for his temperamental defense of his work, Newton engaged in heated correspondence with Hooke before suffering a nervous breakdown and withdrawing from the public eye in 1678. His methods drew sharp rebuke from established Society member Robert Hooke, who was unsparing again with Newton’s follow-up paper in 1675. Through his experiments with refraction, Newton determined that white light was a composite of all the colors on the spectrum, and he asserted that light was composed of particles instead of waves. Asked to give a demonstration of his telescope to the Royal Society of London in 1671, he was elected to the Royal Society the following year and published his notes on optics for his peers. He constructed the first reflecting telescope in 1668, and the following year he received his Master of Arts degree and took over as Cambridge’s Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. Newton returned to Cambridge in 1667 and was elected a minor fellow. Isaac Newton’s Telescope and Studies on Light When the Great Plague shuttered Cambridge in 1665, Newton returned home and began formulating his theories on calculus, light and color, his farm the setting for the supposed falling apple that inspired his work on gravity. You just need to place the mouse cursor over the prism to darken the room and reveal the color spectrum.Newton studied a classical curriculum at Cambridge, but he became fascinated by the works of modern philosophers such as René Descartes, even devoting a set of notes to his outside readings he titled “Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae” (“Certain Philosophical Questions”). You can perform a virtual version of the experiment below. For the experiment he placed a glass prism in front of a beam of light projected through a tiny hole in a window shade. Newton performed an experiment using a glass prism. How Did Newton Discover the Color Spectrum? It was his experiments with light that first made him famous. His work in optics included the study of white light and the discovery of the color spectrum. His discovery of calculus led the way to more powerful methods of solving mathematical problems. What Else Did Sir Isaac Newton Discover?īesides his work on universal gravitation (gravity), Newton developed the three laws of motion which form the basic principles of modern physics. Yes, Sir Isaac Newton is best known for his work on gravity, but he worked on and discovered many other scientific wonders during his lifetime (1642-1727). He was also the first scientist to be knighted, which is a great honor in England and the reason "Sir" precedes his name. An engraving of Sir Isaac Newton by Caroline Hulot.
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