Woolsthorpe Manor near Grantham, Newton’s birthplace. On August 8th, 1665, Trinity College temporarily closed down on account of an epidemic of plague that was sweeping the country. Newton returned home, and it was as he sat beside an apple tree (the tree on the right, behind the fence, is a scion of that tree) that the theory of gravity first leapt into his agile mind. He instantly saw what no one else had yet been able to see: how and why it was that the planets and moons of our solar system keep up their dizzying dance with such precision, neither falling into the sun nor bumping one into another.
Introduction
Most people know the story of Newton’s apple: how the great mathematician, Sir Isaac Newton, stumbled onto the principle of gravitation when he saw an apple fall from a tree. In his Memoirs of Newton’s Life (1752) William Stukeley not only confirmed the truth of the tale from Newton’s own lips, but also gave us a glimpse of the astonishing fertility of mind that followed.
AFTER dinner, the weather being warm, we went into the garden, and drank tea under the shade of some apple trees, only he, and myself.* Amidst other discourse, he told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. “Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground,” thought he to himself: occasioned by the fall of an apple, as he sat in a contemplative mood: “Why should it not go sideways, or upwards? but constantly to the earth’s centre?*
“Assuredly, the reason is, that the earth draws it. There must be a drawing power in matter: and the sum of the drawing power in the matter of the earth must be in the earth’s centre, not in any side of the earth.
* This was on April 15th, 1726.
* Stukeley thus confirms a story told to Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet, 1694-1778) by Newton’s niece Catherine Barton, who married Sir Isaac’s successor at the Royal Mint, John Conduitt.
Précis
Some years after the death of Sir Isaac Newton, William Stukeley recalled a conversation in the garden of the famous mathematician’s home. Sir Isaac had told him that it was here that a falling apple had led him to wonder why things fall straight down only, and to guess that all matter exerts an attractive force of some kind. (59 / 60 words)
Some years after the death of Sir Isaac Newton, William Stukeley recalled a conversation in the garden of the famous mathematician’s home. Sir Isaac had told him that it was here that a falling apple had led him to wonder why things fall straight down only, and to guess that all matter exerts an attractive force of some kind.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 65 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 55 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: about, although, if, just, must, not, or, until.
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