Intr od ucti on

Newton was born in

Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, in
England. Newton, Sir Isaac (1642-
1727), English physicist,
mathematician, and natural
philosopher, considered one of
the most important scientists of
all time. Newton formulated laws
of universal gravitation and
motion—laws that explain how
objects move on Earth as well as
through the heavens (Mechanics). He established the
modern study of optics—or the behavior of light—and
built the first reflecting telescope. His mathematical
insights led him to invent the area of mathematics
called calculus.
Newton stated his ideas in several published
works, two of which, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia
Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural
Philosophy, 1687) and Opticks (1704), are considered
among the greatest scientific works ever produced.
Newton’s revolutionary contributions explained the
workings of a large part of the physical world in
mathematical terms, and they suggested that
science may provide explanations for other
phenomena as well.
Published in 1687, Newton’s two-volume
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
(Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy)
contains his important three laws of motion, also
called Newton’s laws, excerpted here.Newton carried
Galileo’s equation forward by introducing the concept
of force. He began by restating Galileo’s law of
inertia as a situation applying to the absence of
force. Newton’s first law states “A body in motion
remains in motion (with constant velocity) unless
acted upon by an external force.” Rest, in Newton’s
laws, is merely an example of motion with zero
velocity. So force is defined as the agency that
changes the state of motion, and thus the velocity, of
a body.
Newton’s famous second law relates a to a force
acting on the object via the equation F = ma. The
quantity m is the “stuff” inside the object, which
Newton called inertial mass. The bigger the value of
m, the larger the force required to get the object
moving—that is, accelerating. Applied to Galileo’s
experiments, F is the force of gravity tugging at the
object and aimed toward the center of Earth. F is
carefully defined as the sum of all forces.
Newton’s second law accounted for the motion
of planets pulled by the Sun’s gravitational force; the
motion of projectiles, influenced by air and the pull of
gravity; and the tides, which are caused by ocean
waters pulled by the Sun and the Moon. Newton
proved mathematically what Kepler had concluded
from observations—that planets move in elliptical
paths. To make this proof, he had to know the precise
form of F. F must change, depending on the distance
of the planet from the Sun. So Newton had to guess
the way the force of the Sun on a planet grows
weaker as the distance between these two objects
increases. His guess was an inverse square law,
which states that the force of gravity is inversely
proportional to the square of the distance between
the two objects.
Newton’s equations also took into account the
fact that objects have two kinds of masses: inertial
mass that resists motion and gravitational mass that
encourages motion. He wrote another equation
illustrating that for any object, the two types of
masses—gravitational mass and inertial mass—are
equal. Einstein would return to this idea in his
general theory of relativity, wherein he made the
equality of inertia and gravitational masses a key
point.
The curious behavior of objects in space capsules,
which we call weightlessness, works on the same
principle. The astronaut, his sandwich, and his drink
all float together, apparently without gravity. But
gravity is still pulling on the astronaut, and the
capsule, and the sandwich. They respond according
to their inertia, and the two effects cancel each other
out.
Newton’s work was vital to the evolution of
modern physics.
Newton's third law-" To every action, there is equal
and opposite reaction".

Wav e Ph eno me na in Gen era l

When we speak of waves, we generally think of those
we see in the water, but there are in fact two
different kinds. We have already discussed this in the
context of the transmission of seismic waves through
the Earth’s interior but it is so important that I repeat
some of that discussion here.
• Longitudinal waves, which I demonstrated
with a `slinky toy' in class, consist of
 disturbances, which pass through a medium by
virtue of to-and-fro motions of and collisions
between atoms. Sound is an example. I speak,
and my vibrating vocal cords cause the atoms
near me to `jiggle' in some way. As they move
away from me and towards you, they bump into
other atoms and rebound, but the other atoms
carry the motion forward until they in turn collide
with yet more atoms, and so on. The `jiggling'
eventually reaches your ears (at the speed of
sound, about 300 metres per second in the
atmosphere) and set your eardrums to vibrating
in a way that your brain can interpret as a sound
which is comprehensible (I hope).

• Transverse waves, which I demonstrated in

class by wiggling up and down one end of a
stretched rope, consist of disturbances which are
across (or transverse to) the direction in which
the wave itself is going. For instance, if you were
a bug on the rope, you would be moving up and
down as the ripples pass by, but the disturbance
itself passes along the length of the rope. The
familiar wind-driven waves at the surface of a
body of water are also transverse: a cork floating
in the water bobs up and down where it is, while
the disturbance passes through the water along
the surface.
A common feature in both of these types of waves is
that the medium itself does not suffer any net
displacement: the atoms go back and forth or up and
down, but if you look again a few minutes later you
will see that they are still near where they were at
the start. Likewise, a cork floating in the water
merely bobs up and down `in place'. There is room
for confusion here, because you are used to seeing
waves breaking onto a beach. At the shore, individual
atoms of water actually move quite a lot as the
waves spill up onto the sand; but this phenomenon is
caused by the complex interactions between the
transverse wave and the lake bottom, which itself is
sloped and irregular, causing friction and so on. In
the open sea, the wave disturbance merely passes
through the watery medium without carrying the
constituent atoms along with it.
In what follows, we will consider the evidence for
light being a transverse wave. (In preparation for
that, you should read carefully the definitions of
wavelength, frequency, and so on that you will find
on page 164 of the text.) When we speak of light as a
wave phenomenon, we try to find ways in which its
behaviour is not consistent with what you would
expect from a bunch of little energy-carrying
`bullets'. Are there such ways?
Waves Spreading Out from a Hole
Diffraction:
Consider ocean waves arriving at a breakwater with a
hole in it, as shown in
the figure:

The breakwater could

consist of a cement
wall, say, with an
opening - the sort of
thing you find near a
yacht harbour. The
boats enter through
the gap in the wall, while the wall itself provides
some protection against very strong waves crashing
directly into the docks and the shore.
Now, if you were standing at point X on the
shore, directly opposite the gap in the wall, you
would surely see waves breaking at your feet onto
the beach. But what if you were standing at point Y,
perhaps fifty meters north along the shore? Would
the water there be as completely still as a millpond?
No indeed! As you know from experience, the
disturbances in the water would indeed spread out as
shown in the figure, and people along a wide stretch
of the shoreline would see the water slosh up and
down, although less vigorously than would the
person directly opposite the gap.
This is quite distinct from the behaviour of lumps
that move in straight lines - things like bullets, for
instance. If you are ever being shot at, just duck
through the cover afforded by a doorway in a cement
wall and you are safe; there is no need to fear that
the bullets will 'smear out' in all directions as they
pass through the doorway.
But now, on a much smaller scale, think of a
source of light to the left of the figure and shining
onto a little hole in an opaque card. If the light was
like bullets, you would expect to see a tiny distinct
spot of light directly opposite the hole, but no light at
any other location. Instead, you will find that it
spreads out into a fuzzy blob. (In fact, it does more
than produce just a fuzzy blob. We would also see
some interesting structure, including rings and so
forth, which we will not concern ourselves with here,
other than to note that this too is well understood in
terms of the wave nature of light.
You may protest that you do not see this in day-
to-day life! In general, an object held up in front of a
source of light seems to cast a very sharp shadow.
(Imagine making hand-shadows to entertain your
kids at night, for instance.) That is true: most
shadows do look quite sharp. The effects of
diffraction are really only important if the hole is very
small (comparable to the wavelength of light itself).
In other words, light which passes through an
extremely tiny pinhole gets smeared out into a
relatviely large fuzzy patch; but if the hole is much
larger, the effect is not readily seen.

Diffra ctio n: Waves `Bending' Around Corners

We have considered a hole in a seawall (or, in
the context of the bullets, a doorway in a cement
wall), but in fact the phenomenon is more general
than this. The effects of diffraction are seen wherever
there is a sharp discontinuity. Waves, for example,
can `bend,' or diffract, around corners. Indeed, this is
how you can hear voices around corners, even if
there are no walls or other buildings to provide
echoes or reverberation. Sound waves diffract.
Light can be shown to do the same thing. Once
again this occurs on very small scales, since the
wavelengths of visible light are so short.
Consequently, one doesn't notice such phenomena in
day-to-day life. As evidence, however, I showed you
a picture in class, one in which we could see the
sharp edge of a razor blade and a so-called `shadow
diffraction pattern,' a series of dark lines parallel to
the edges of the razor. (I do not want to go into the
technical details of how these lines are formed.
Suffice it to say that it is fundamentally due to this
`bending around corners.') This is further evidence
that light behaves like a wave.
By the way, you might be tempted to think that
the phenomenon of twilight is caused by soemthing
like this. Does the light from the sun diffract around
the edge of the Earth so that we still see a bit of
sunlight even after it has set? The answer is no - or,
at least, that this effect is utterly negligible. Twilights
are caused by the gas and dust in the Earth's
atmosphere. If the Earth were completely airless, we
would be plunged into pitch darkness the instant the
sun set. Instead, we enjoy lingering twilights because
of the scattering (bouncing) of light off molecules
and atoms high in the Earth's atmosphere.

In terfere nce : Waves Interacting with One

Another
Just above, we considered ocean waves arriving
at a breakwater with a single hole in it. A more
interesting effect would be produced by a breakwater
with two holes in it, as shown in the following figure:
 Upon the
arrival of
parallel
waves from
the open sea,
each hole
acts as an
independent
centre of new
sets of waves
propagating
out towards
the beach. In
the figure, I
have colour-coded the new waves, with the hole at
the top producing a set of expanding black ripples
(one of which has been coloured green, for reasons
to become obvious in a moment) and the one at the
bottom producing a set of expanding blue ripples
(one of which has been coloured red). At the right of
the picture, the dotted parts of a few of the waves
show how they would have continued had they not
run up against the beach, which is represented by
the thin black line.
Now ask yourself what you would see if you were
standing on the beach in the various locations
indicated.
• If you were exactly half-way between the two
holes in the breakwater, at the point marked
with a large red letter 'A', you would be seeing a
peak (an upward surge of water, represented by
the solid green line) in the wave coming from the
top hole, and a peak in the wave coming from
 the bottom hole (the solid red line). At that
location, therefore, the upward surge of the
water would be redoubled as the independent
waves arrive and their effects add. A moment
later, you would see a trough (a downward
displacement) in the waves arriving from the top
hole, and another trough in the wave pattern
arriving from the bottom hole, so the the total
downward effect would also be doubled. These
effects would repeat again and again at the
frequency of the original waves.
In other words, at point A you would see waves
which are enhanced in effect because they are
arriving in phase from the two holes in the
breakwater. This is called constructive
interference. In short, if you were at position A,
you would see the water going up and down with
great vigour!
• You can identify other positions where the
behaviour would be qualitatively similar. At the
points labelled 'B1' and 'B2,' for instance, we
would expeience the coincident arrival of a wave
from the top hole and another from the bottom
hole. This situation differs from position A in that
the arriving waves did not set off at the same
time from the two holes. (At point B1, we are
seeing the arrival of the black wave which is just
ahead of the green one, whereas we see the
arrival of the blue wave which is four waves in
front of the red one.) But the effect is the same:
we experience a vigourous up-and-down of the
water as these disturbances arrive in phase.
 • Now look at the position marked C1. Here we see
an upward peak from the top hole (the green
wave), but a downward trough from the bottom
hole (we are exactly halfway between the
successive crests represented by the blue
waves). The net displacement of the water is
zero, and that will always be the case. Whatever
disturbance is arriving from the top hole, a
disturbance of equal size but in the opposite
direction will be arriving from the bottom hole.
This, then, is a region of destructive
interference, and the water should be as smooth
as a millpond all the time at that particular
location -- in principle!
In real life, of course, things are not this simple.
Water at the seaside is running up against the
shore, which may be of irregular depth and
roughness, and the wave disturbances rebound
off the shore. Still, if you were sitting on the
shore you would notice that there are regions
where the water seems quite placid, and other
regions where the water is sloshing up and down
with great vigour.
The remarkable thing is that light can be shown to
produce the same kind of interference phenomena.
There is a classical physics experiment known as the
Young double-slit experiment. It duplicates, on a tiny
scale, the two-holed ocean breakwater situation just
described. Young cut two tiny slits into an opaque
screen onto which he shone a light of a well-defined
colour (which means, as we will see, that it contains
light of just one wavelength). This did not produce
two bright images, one of each slit, on the wall
beyond the screen; neither did it produce two fuzzy
blobs, as you might have expected from the
discussion in the previous few paragraphs. Instead,
Young saw a pattern of dark and light bands, as
shown here:

The bright regions are locations where the

`wavefronts of light' add constructively (so the light
is very bright); the dark regions are locations where
the separate wavefronts cancel out entirely by
destructive interference. Light is a wave!

Waves in
Wha t?
When we
considered
sound and
water waves, we were speaking of mechanical
disturbances in some medium. For instance, the
sound of my voice is generated by vibrating vocal
cords which set the air in motion; the waves in the
ocean are set going by the effects of the wind
pushing the water about; and so forth. Thereafter the
disturbance propagates by simple physical laws. The
atoms collide with other atoms and rebound, passing
on their energy and momentum, etc. But light is
different in that it can pass through a vacuum.
(Sound, of course, cannot). There does not have to
be a medium to carry the light. What is happening?
 A century or more ago, it was believed that there
was a medium through which light propagated, a
medium called the luminiferous (`light-bearing')
ether. Since light passes between the stars and
planets, it was obvious that the ether had to fill all
space. Yet the Earth has clearly been orbiting the sun
in a more-or-less-unchanging orbit for many millions
of years, so it must experience a negligible amount
of `wind resistance' from the ether. This
consideration, and the extremely high speed with
which light travels, implied some very unusual
properties for the ether. A great goal of late 19th-
century physics, then, was to find absolute proof of
the existence of the ether, and to learn more about
its properties.
The death-knell came with a famous experiment,
carried out by Michelson and Morley, which seemed
to show that there was no ether. An almost direct
consequence of this was Einstein's development of
his special theory of relativity, in 1905, a theory
which completely changed the way in which we think
about space and time. I will not describe those
developments now since they fit in more naturally
nearer the end of the course. But the important point
is that I want you to realize that light is not
analogous to sound and other mechanical
disturbances which pass through a substance or a
medium. It can, and does, travel through the true
vacuum of space.

Ele ctromag neti c Wave s

The modern physics interpretation is that light is
a wave which consists of changing electric and
magnetic fields which propagate through space (see
the figure below). Before going further, let us remind
ourselves of what we mean by an electric field.
We say that an electric field exists in a location if
a charged particle, like a proton, feels an electrical
force there (perhaps because of the presence of
other charged particles in its vicinity, for instance).
That is what makes a spark leap from your fingertip
to a doorknob when you build up what we call `static
electricity' -- the electrical forces cause the
negatively-charged electrons to leap across the gap.
Light can be thought of as a transverse wave moving
at high speed (300,000 kilometers per second)
through intervening space, and consisting of rapidly
changing electric and magnetic fields.

Can you
predict the
effects such a
wave might
have as it
passes by?
Well, one answer is that a charged particle (like an
electron) sitting by itself in empty space should 'bob
up and down' as the wave goes by, just as a cork
bobs up and down in the water when a wave passes
by. (As you can see from the figure, there is also a
changing magnetic field, which is at right angles to
the electric field. You can imagine a small compass
turning back and forth in quick response to this
changing magnetic field as the wave passes by.)
 The reality of this interpretation can be tested.
Take a strip of metal which is a good conductor (that
is, one in which the electrons are fairly free to move)
and send light of some wavelength (and associated
frequency) towards it. Then design some simple
electronics to detect whether or not the electrons are
indeed bobbing up and down, an effect which would
be tanatamount to producing small electric currents
of varying size inside the conductor.
This is exactly what happens in your radio
antenna or TV antenna!. The signal which is
broadcast from the radio or TV station is not visible
light, of course, so our eyes are not sensitive to it,
but it is light (electromagnetic radiation) none the
less. It makes the electrons in the radio antenna
``bob up and down'', and the small electric currents
so generated are detected, amplified, and used to
determine how to make your speakers vibrate. This
in turn creates the sound waves which you hear.
Please note an important distinction. Radio
waves are light, not sound. They are used by the
circuitry in your radio to determine how to make the
speakers vibrate, and that is where the sound comes
from. Radio astronomers are collecting
electromagnetic radiation from the stars and
galaxies, not sound (which could never pass through
the vacuum of space anyway).
 Gra vitati on
Newton's Law of Gravity is not precise in
extreme circumstances, such as very high velocities
or very strong gravity. For cases such as these,
Einstein's General and Special Relativity theories are
needed. However, in most other cases, and
especially those that we are familiar with on Earth,
Newton's Law works extremely well.
It is based upon his laws of
motion, and it shows how two objects
exhibit a force upon the other. It is
the equation to the right. It says
that the gravitational force experienced is equal to a
gravitational constant times both masses divided by
the distance between them squared. The value "G" is
an extremely small number, and therefore the
gravitational force is extremely weak - the weakest of
the four fundamental forces. This law also shows that
the force of gravity dies off with the square of the
distance. This means that if you are twice as far
away from something, then the gravitational force
you experience is 1/4 as much. if distance is trebled,
the force becomes one-ninth as much.
He had also discovered the law stating the
centrifugal force (or force away from the center) of a
body moving uniformly in a circular path. However,
he still believed that the earth's gravity and the
motions of the planets might be caused by the action
of whirlpools, or vortices, of small corpuscles. He
thought of circular motion as the result of a balance
between two forces--one centrifugal, the other
centripetal (toward the center)--rather than as the
result of one force, a centripetal force, which
constantly deflects the body away from its inertial
path in a straight line. Earth's gravity extended to
the Moon, counterbalancing its centrifugal force.
From his law of centrifugal force and Kepler's third
law of planetary motion, Newton deduced that the
centrifugal (and hence centripetal) force of the Moon
or of any planet must decrease as the inverse square
of its distance from the center of its motion. Newton
applied his mathematical talents & proved that if a
body obeys Kepler's second law (which states that
the line joining a planet to the sun sweeps out equal
areas in equal times), then the body is being acted
upon by a centripetal force. This discovery revealed
for the first time the physical significance of Kepler's
second law.
Newton succeeded in showing that a body
moving in an elliptical path and attracted to one
focus must indeed be drawn by a force that varies as
the inverse square of the distance. By common
consent the Principia is the greatest scientific book
ever written. Within the framework of an infinite,
homogeneous, three-dimensional, empty space and
a uniformly and eternally flowing "absolute" time,
Newton fully analyzed the motion of bodies in
resisting and no resisting media under the action of
centripetal forces. The results were applied to
orbiting bodies, projectiles, pendulum, and free-fall
near the Earth.
 Law s O f M oti on
Newton's Laws of Motion are still used by physicists
all over the world. . Everything in that genre of
physics is based upon these three laws:
1. Every object has uniform motion unless acted
upon by a force.
2. The force applied to an object is equal to the
object's mass times the resulting acceleration:
3. For every action, there is an equal and opposite
reaction.
These laws are used to describe everything from
throwing a ball to the merging of galaxies.
 The First Law: Inertia Formalized
As we noted before, there seem coincidentally to
be many examples of physical laws `in threes.' Here
is another example: Newton's famous three laws of
motion. While these warrant careful consideration,
and while they can be expressed in technical and
mathematical terms, my earnest wish is that you will
develop a complete intuitive understanding of what
they mean qualitatively. To clarify your
understanding, therefore, let us consider them in
simple conversational terms.
The first law is merely a restatement, in
technical terms, of the notion of inertia, a concept
introduced by Galileo. Newton now makes explicit the
understanding that an object in any state of motion
(including rest) will remain unchanged in that state
(which means that those at rest will remain at rest)
unless some unbalanced force is acting.
The word `unbalanced' merely acknowledges
that we don't expect any motion to result from
balanced forces. If you and your friend both push on
a car, one at the front and one at the back, the forces
will balance each other and nothing will happen. That
is, all kinds of forces can be present, but unless there
is an excess force in some direction, there will be no
change in the state of motion of the body being
pushed or pulled.
Let us consider an immediate implication which
follows from the First Law. Think of the space shuttle
and its astronauts orbiting the Earth. The shuttle
does not move in a straight line, but rather follows a
curved path around the Earth. This must mean that
some force is acting on it! The force is gravity, as we
will see: if the space shuttle did not feel the
gravitational force of the Earth, it would simply move
in a straight line, and gradually leave the Earth
behind. In other words, the shuttle is most
emphatically not beyond the Earth's gravity, as is
commonly believed, despite the fact that the
astronauts experience weightlessness. (I will return
to this point later.) This consideration also makes
clear the incorrectness of Galileo's thinking: he
believed that the circular motion of the moon around
the Earth was a natural 'coasting' which was related
to inertia without the requirement of any forces at
play.

The Second Law: When Forces Are

Unbalanced
The second law, perhaps the most famous in all
of physics, merely makes quantitative something
which we know already by everyday experience. If
you kick a tennis ball, it moves away quickly. If you
kick a cannon ball, it does not, even if you use the
same amount of force. The difference is that massive
objects (those containing many atoms and lots of
material) are not easily set it motion. This is because
they have lots of inertia (resistance to being
accelerated from one state of motion, such as rest,
into another state of motion).
The law is usually given in the form of a very
simple equation: F = ma. Let us think in words about
what this means!
• Suppose first of all that you have an object of a
given mass (m) -- that is, an object containing
some total number of atoms, some total amount
of matter. If a tiny force F acts on it, it will
accelerate at a given rate a, which will be rather
small (since F is small). If you increase the force
F to some larger value, the acceleration a will be
larger. In other words, bigger forces make
objects accelerate more rapidly than small
forces do. A powerful engine can get your car up
to highway speed more quickly than a weak
engine would.
Please note, though, that even a small force can
produce a large final speed if it is allowed to act
for long enough! The small force generates a
small acceleration, so the object gains speed
only very slowly; but if the force is applied for
many minutes (or hours, or years) the body may
wind up moving quite quickly after all. This will
become important later on, when we consider
interstellar travel. We will have to consider the
alternate merits of accelerating to high speed
very quickly, using powerful rockets for a brief
time, or accelerating rather slowly, using feeble
rockets which are allowed to burn for a very long
time.

• Now consider a situation in which you have a

force of fixed size (F) at your disposal - say, all
the strength you can muster with your two arms
in trying to clear stones and boulders from your
garden. If you apply the full force to a stone of
small mass, (m) you can really send it flying (and
of course in practice you would not bother
 applying all your force to it, but rather conserve
your energy for the more taxing jobs). But a very
massive stone, with large m, would be
accelerated only a little, and you would really
have to struggle to make it move perceptibly.
By the way, this is an opportune moment to warn
you about a very common misuse of a word. In
physics, a massive body is one which contains a lot
of matter in total -- many atoms, or atoms which
themselves are particularly massive because they
contain many protons and neutrons. This may have
nothing to do with the size of the object. A small lead
block may be much more massive -- much more
resistant to being set in motion by a push, for
instance -- than a much larger beach ball.
My experience is that students often use the word
"massive" to mean nothing more than "big" (often in
the sense of "awesome"). Later in the course, we will
learn, for example, that as the sun uses up its
nuclear fuel, it will expand enormously, becoming a
red giant star of such large size that the Earth may
wind up inside its outermost parts. But the sun will
be no more massive at that time than it is now -- it
will contain as many atoms as it ever did, and will not
have 'put on weight.' Of course, it will be much less
densely packed on average: the atoms will be more
widely spread, but the total mass will not have
changed. Be very careful about how you use this
word, which has a very precise physical meaning!
The Third Law: Action and Reaction
The third law, also known as the "action-
reaction" law, is one that causes many people a lot of
confusion. Partly this is because it is used in some
situations as a kind of vague metaphor for human
behaviour. (If you get mad at me, I'll react by getting
mad at you.) But in physics it has a very clearcut
meaning. When one body acts on another (as when I
use my finger to push a book across the table), then
there is a reaction of equal size acting the other way
(so my finger feels a force which we register as the
resistance of the book to being moved).
One reason for confusion is that a lot of people
think that if two forces are "equal and opposite" then
nothing will happen -- they must cancel out. Why
then does anything ever move at all? The answer, of
course, is that the forces do not cancel! They act on
different bodies, and can have an effect. When you
do a pushup, for instance, you are pressing down on
the ground, pushing it away from you. The equal and
opposite force (the "reaction" of the Earth acting on
you) pushes you up and away from the ground. In
fact, under the influence of these two forces of equal
size, both you and the Earth move, but the Earth is
so huge and massive that it budges an immeasurably
small amount (remember Newton's second law!),
while your body moves perceptibly.
By the way, it is worth thinking for a moment
about how these forces are transmitted. When you
do a pushup, you are flexing your arms in such a way
as to push your constituent atoms into the ground, or
at least try to. If the ground had no structural rigidity
-- imagine doing a pushup on water! -- your hands
would merely slide seamlessly into it. As it is, though,
the material is held in a rigid configuration by the
electric forces between all the constituent atoms,
molecules, and crystals. You are trying to force your
constituent atoms (those in your hands and fingers)
into these already crowded regions. As your atoms
are pushed ever closer to those of the ground, the
electric repulsion between the various particles
resists the motion and stops your progress. This
force, applied to the Earth, pushes it away from you;
and the reaction force pushes you away from the
Earth. Again, the reason that you are lifted bodily is
because you have some rigidity of your own. If you
had arms like cooked spaghetti, you would merely
flop onto the floor. (Have you ever tried to push a car
with a rope?)
It does not take volition or conscious intent to
make a force act on a body, or to generate a reaction
force. Consider a brick sitting on the floor, for
instance. I will anticipate Newton's introduction of
gravitation to point out what you already know: the
gravity of the Earth is pulling down on the brick, and
if there were no floor there it would merely
accelerate downwards, or fall, in accordance with
Newton's second law. But, just as with you and the
pushup, the gravitational tug downwards has the
effect of trying to intermingle the atoms of the brick
with those of the floor. The repulsive force between
the electrically-charged constituents of the atoms
resists that action (Newton's third law) and is strong
enough to hold the brick up.
 Opti cs
Newton's optical research began during his
undergraduate years at Cambridge. In 1665-1666,
Newton performed a number of experiments on the
composition of light. Guided initially by the writings
of Kepler and Descartes, Newton's main discovery
was that visible (white) light is heterogeneous--that
is, white light is composed of colors that can be
considered primary. Through a brilliant series of
experiments, Newton demonstrated that prisms
separate rather than modify white light.
Newton also demonstrated that the colors of the
spectrum, once thought to be qualities, correspond
to an observed and quantifiable 'degree of
Refrangibility. 'Newton's most famous experiment,
the experimentum crucis, demonstrated his theory of
the composition of light. Briefly, in a dark room
Newton allowed a narrow beam of sunlight to pass
from a small hole in a window shutter through a
prism, thus breaking the white light into an oblong
spectrum on a board. Then, through a small aperture
in the board, Newton selected a given color (for
example, red) to pass through yet another aperture
to a second prism, through which it was refracted
onto a second board. What began as ordinary white
light was thus dispersed through two prisms?
Newton's 'crucial experiment' demonstrated that
a selected color leaving the first prism could not be
separated further by the second prism. The selected
beam remained the same color, and its angle of
refraction was constant throughout. Newton
concluded that white light is a 'Heterogeneous
mixture of differently refrangible Rays' and that
colors of the spectrum cannot themselves be
individually modified, but are 'Original and connate
properties. 'The Opticks of 1704, which first appeared
in English, is Newton's most comprehensive and
readily accessible work on light and color. In
Newton's words, the purpose of the Opticks was 'not
to explain the Properties of Light by Hypotheses, but
to propose and prove them by Reason and
Experiments.' Divided into three books, the Opticks
moves from definitions, axioms, propositions, and
theorems to proof by experiment. A subtle blend of
mathematical reasoning and careful observation, the
Opticks became the model for experimental physics
in the 18th century.
Newton showed that the Spectrum was too long
to be explained by the accepted theory of the
bending (or Refraction) of light by dense media. The
old theory said that all rays of white light striking the
prism at the same angle would be equally refracted.
These discoveries led Newton to the logical, but
erroneous, conclusion that telescopes using
refracting lenses could never overcome the
distortions of chromatic dispersion. He therefore
proposed and constructed a reflecting telescope (see
Telescope, Optical), the first of its kind, and the
prototype of the largest modern optical telescopes. In
1671 he donated an improved version to the Royal
Society of London, the foremost scientific society of
the day. Newton's Opticks appeared the following
year. It dealt with the theory of light and color and
with Newton's investigations of the colors of thin
sheets, of "Newton's rings," and of the phenomenon
of diffraction of light.

Pr oj ecti les & Pl anets

Let us now turn to the central topic of the Principia,
the universality of the gravitational force. The legend
is that Newton saw an apple fall in his garden in
Lincolnshire, thought of it in terms of an attractive
gravitational force towards the earth, and realized
the same force might extend as far as the moon. He
was familiar with Galileo's work on projectiles, and
suggested that the moon's motion in orbit could be
understood as a natural extension of that theory. To
see what is meant by this, consider a gun shooting a
projectile horizontally from a very high mountain,
and imagine using more and more powder in
successive shots to drive the projectile faster and
faster.

The parabolic paths would become flatter and flatter,

and, if we imagine that the mountain is so high that
air resistance can be ignored, and the gun is
sufficiently powerful, eventually the point of landing
is so far away that we must consider the curvature of
the earth in finding where it lands.
In fact, the real situation is more dramatic---the
earth's curvature may mean the projectile never
lands at all. This was envisioned by Newton in the
Principia. The following diagram is from his later
popularization, A Treatise of the System of the World,
written in the 1680's:

The mountaintop at V is supposed to be above the

earth's atmosphere, and for a suitable initial speed,
the projectile orbits the earth in a circular path. In
fact, the earth's curvature is such that the surface
falls away below a truly flat horizontal line by about
five meters in 8,000 meters (five miles). Recall that
five meters is just the vertical distance an initially
horizontally moving projectile will fall in the first
second of motion. But this implies that if the
(horizontal) muzzle velocity were 8,000 meters per
second, the downward fall of the cannonball would
be just matched by the earth's surface falling away,
and it would never hit the ground! This is just the
motion, familiar to us now, of a satellite in a low
orbit, which travels at about 8,000 meters (five
miles) a second, or 18,000 miles per hour. (Actually,
Newton drew this mountain impossibly high, no
doubt for clarity of illustration. A satellite launched
horizontally from the top would be far above the
usual shuttle orbit, and go considerably more slowly
than 18,000 miles per hour.)
Newton realized that the moon's circular path
around the earth could be caused in this way by the
same gravitational force that would hold such a
cannonball in low orbit, in other words, the same
force that causes bodies to fall.
Moon's motion, beginning at some particular
instant, as deviating downwards from some initial
"horizontal" line, just as for the cannonball shot
horizontally from a high mountain.
The first question is: does the moon fall five
meters below the horizontal line, that is, towards the
earth, in the first second? This was not difficult for
Newton to check, because the path of the moon was
precisely known by this time. The moon's orbit is
approximately a circle of radius about 384,000
kilometers (240,000 miles), which it goes around in a
month (to be precise, in 27.3 days), so the distance
covered in one second is, conveniently, very close to
one kilometer. It is then a matter of geometry to
figure out how far the curved path falls below a
"horizontal" line in one second of flight, and the
answer turns out to be not five meters, but only a
little over one millimeter! (Actually around 1.37
millimeters.) Thus the "natural acceleration" of the
moon towards the earth, measured by how far it falls
below straight line motion in one second, is less than
that of an apple here on earth by the ratio of five
meters to 1.37 millimeters, which works out to be
about 3,600.
What can be the significance of this much
smaller rate of fall? Newton's answer was that the
natural acceleration of the moon was much smaller
than that of the cannonball because they were both
caused by a force---a gravitational attraction towards
the earth, and that the gravitational force became
weaker on going away from the earth.

Th e Gr eat Co ns erv atio n

Laws
A lot of very profound physics is encapsulated in
the so-called conservation laws, which are
statements that certain quantities are `conserved'
(unchanging in total) in isolated systems. We have
encountered this twice before, once in my discussion
of how the conservation of energy explains the fact
that stars are hot, and again when I explained how
the conservation of angular momentum explained
the stability of the spin of the Earth. The time is now
right, however, to explore the issue a little more
deeply.
 In Newton's time, the concept of the conservation
laws was not as developed as nowadays, so this
perspective is not one that Newton had fully
available to him. In modern terminology, we believe
that the following quantities are conserved in a
closed system (that is, one in which no external
influences or forces intrude):
• The total linear momentum (to be defined
below)
• The total angular momentum
• The total electrical charge
• The total energy
• The total mass

I demonstrated some of this in class. Consider, for

instance, the conservation of energy. If I lift a piece of
chalk above the table, I have done some work
against gravity (my muscles have expended some
stored chemical energy by burning up sugars and
other fuels). My virtue of its new position, the chalk
now possesses some "gravitational potential energy."
When I drop it, the potential energy vanishes, or
rather is converted to kinetic energy, the energy of
motion. When the chalk hits the table, its directed
motion stops but the total energy is still conserved; it
goes into the heating of the table (the impact makes
the atoms jiggle around more vigorously) and the
noise, which you hear (the impact jiggles the atoms
in the air, and this disturbance spreads out as a
sound and rattles your eardrums).
Let us turn now to linear momentum, which is, as
the name implies, a measure of the momentum (a
word which may have some intuitive meaning for
you) carried by an object moving along some
particular direction, or line, of motion. In fact, the
amount of linear momentum an object carries is
given by its total mass times its speed of motion.
Again, this equation is sterile on its own; so let us
think of some applications. In a football game,
stopping a fullback from crossing the goal line is
more difficult if he is moving at speed, with a good
deal of momentum, and there is an obvious
advantage if the fullback is a large (massive) player
rather than someone of very slight build. Likewise,
we all know that a baseball thrown at ninety miles an
hour carries more ``punch'' than a ping-pong ball
moving at the same speed. In a sense, it is as though
you were to ask how much damage a moving object
could do if it should be involved in a collision.
Interestingly, there are two ways to quantify this
``punch'' (or, if you prefer, this "ability to do
significant damage"). One is to consider the kinetic
energy (the energy of motion) of the body; the other,
which is not the same, is to consider the linear
momentum. Why two different ways? It turns out that
the conservation of linear momentum is intimately
related to Newton's Second Law, while the
conservation of energy has very broad-reaching
implications in a host of physical situations. Those of
you who have taken physics courses know that some
types of problems are more easily solved by
considering the energetic; in other problems,
considering the momentum may be the key to a
quick solution. (No matter what your approach, of
course, you should get the same answer.) In general,
some thoughtful consideration of both these
components together -- the energy and the
momentum -- provides deep insights into physical
behavior.

I demonstrated this in the lecture with a device,

which has a row of billiard balls hanging on strings, a
desktop executive toy often seen in stores and
offices. The simplest way to use such a toy is to pull
back and then release a single ball at one end. It
swings forward and hits the remaining unmoving
balls, of which there are typically half-a-dozen. A
single ball immediately flies off the other end, and
rises up to about the same height as the original ball
was pulled back (which implies that it flies off with
just about the speed the original ball had). That
seems, in some intuitive sense, to be just what you
would expect.
So far so good. But what happens when two balls
are dropped together at one end? The answer is that
we always get two balls coming off the other end.
Why? Why not one ball with twice the speed? Or four
balls with half the speed?
As I demonstrated, with the use of some very
simple equations, the behavior of the swinging balls
before and after impact can be completely
understood in terms of the conservation of energy
and the conservation of linear momentum. This is a
beautiful example of the complete and quantitative
predictability inherent in Newtonian physics: there is
one uniquely correct way events will unfold from a
given starting situation.
Things do not always work out that neatly, by the
way! Some physical situations are horrendously more
complicated. Think, for instance, of a row of stopped
cars at an intersection. If an inattentive motorist runs
into the back of the row at high speed, you will not
generally see a single car pop off the front of the row
with the other cars left sitting there unscathed! The
difference is that the cars are designed to absorb
some of the energy of the collision by crumpling and
breaking apart. (This absorption of energy, seen in its
extreme example in racing car accidents, actually
protects the occupants by soaking up much of the
energy of the collision.) Any calculation of the
behaviour would have to take into account all these
effects. The billiard-ball executive toy is especially
simple in that the resilient balls collide elastically,
which means that essentially all of the kinetic energy
stays in that form. The balls escape the collision
unscathed.
A fine example of the conservation of linear
momentum is to imagine yourself standing in an
unmoving canoe on a placid lake, with a heavy stone
held against your chest. Since everything is
motionless, there is no linear momentum associated
with this system of people and objects. Now fling the
stone away from you as fast as you can! Since it is
now moving to the right (let us say) with some
speed, something else must be moving to the left if
the total linear momentum is to be conserved (i.e. if
it is still to add up to zero, as it did before). This, of
course, is accomplished by the sudden backward
motion of you and the canoe -- with the likely result
that you lose your balance and fall into the water.
This can equally well be considered from the point
of view of Newton's Laws. The First Law reminds us
that when you are standing still, you and the stone
don't change your state of motion since no
unbalanced forces are at play. Suddenly your
muscles twitch and apply an unbalanced force to the
stone, which is accelerated to the right, in
accordance with Newton's Second Law. (The stone is
accelerated only as long as you keep pushing on it,
applying the unbalanced force; as soon as it leaves
your grip, the force vanishes and the stone flies
freely through the air.) Meanwhile, Newton's Third
Law reminds us that the unbalanced force you
applied to the stone is matched by one of equal size
acting on yourself but pointing in the opposite
direction. This will set you in motion, according to
Newton's Second Law. Of course, if you are very
massive (or if the canoe is filled with other people
and stones), you will not accelerate very much -- but
move you will!

How Roc ke ts Wor k

As we will see in the next section, Newton's Laws
plus the Law of Universal Gravitation explain how
and why the planets orbit the sun as they do. In
considering these matters, Newton imagined the way
in which various objects would move if they were to
be launched horizontally at high speed from a
mountaintop. When we consider such objects
orbiting the Earth, one tends inevitably to visualise
rockets, such as those used in the space program.
This visualisation can be a little misleading, so I want
to comment on it in a couple of different ways. The
first of these is to consider how rockets actually work.
Earlier, we considered an implication of Newton's
Third Law: when you do a pushup you actually move
the Earth! You push on it, and the reaction force
pushes on you, so that you lift up from the surface.
The forces are of the same size (``equal and
opposite''), so you move more than the Earth itself
does (since you are so much less massive: see
Newton's Second Law), but in principle both move,
even if the Earth's motion is immeasurably small.
Now consider a rocket. When most people think of
such devices, they visualize:
1. a huge flame and hot gas pouring out the back;
and
2. the rocket pushing against the ground or the air,
rather in the way that you push the blade of your
paddle against the water when you propel a
canoe.
The first of these aspects is misleading; the second is
just plain wrong.
• The rocket actually works by virtue of Newton's
Third Law (or alternatively and equivalently
through the Conservation of Linear Momentum).
Within the rocket engine, the burning of the fuel
heats the gases; this raises the pressure so that
 the gases try to expand in all directions. Since
there is a nozzle at the back, the gases rush out
that way at high speed. The equal and opposite
reaction force pushes the rocket the other way.
(Alternatively, we can just recognize that the
total linear momentum has to be conserved.)
The important point is that this would work
regardless of the nature of the stuff thrown out
the back. You could, for instance, build a little
treadmill device to throw bricks out the back and
thereby accelerate the rocket the other
direction! The reason we use a hot flame is
simply that the rocket is accelerated most
efficiently if the ejected material moves at high
speed, and the burning of liquid fuel heats it so
much that the gases come out very fast indeed.
So it is merely a matter of efficiency.

• The rocket needs nothing to `push against' and

will function in the vacuum of space perfectly
well. (In the 1920s, by the way, the New York
Times published a strident editorial in which they
criticised a physics professor who, they said, had
completely forgotten his basic physics in even
discussing the prospects of future space travel.
According to the Times, rockets would never
function in the vacuum of space! Events have
proven them wrong, of course.) Indeed, rockets
benefit from the lack of air resistance, which
merely retards their acceleration as they climb
away from the Earth's surface. Nor do rockets
need to be streamlined, except insofar as it
helps get them up out of the Earth's atmosphere
with minimal drag. The Space Shuttle looks like
an airplane because that is what it turns into on
return to the Earth: it has to use its
aerodynamics to glide to a safe landing. But a
hundred years from now, it is possible that we
may see a manned interstellar spacecraft, built
in and launched from the vacuum of near-Earth
orbit, which could be shaped like a cauliflower,
for all that it matters.