ISAAC NEWTON

1. Progetto “Physics in English” ISAAC NEWTON TRIVIA QUIZ Prof.ssa A. Martorana

2. ISAAC NEWTON 1642-1727 English mathematician and physicist, one of the foremost scientific intellects of all time

3. ISAAC NEWTON • Where was he born?

4. ISAAC NEWTON • He was born on Easter • False, he was born on Christmas

5. ISAAC NEWTON • His father was a scientist, just like him • False, his father was a farmer who could hardly write his own name

6. ISAAC NEWTON • Isaac, as a child, was the best student in his class. • False, it is said that he showed little promise in grammar school. He was described as "idle" and "inattentive“, one of the worst in his class until a bully at school kicked him. Isaac challenged him to a fight even though he was smaller. He won. That wasn’t enough for him, he decided to be better than the bully at school as well.

7. ISAAC NEWTON • He loved drawing. • True, his room was all coloured, even the ceilings, by drawings and paintings made by him.

8. ISAAC NEWTON • Isaac studied law at Cambridge • True, but then he “stumbled upon” Galilei, Kepler and philosophy and decided to change to science.

9. ISAAC NEWTON • Newton never became a professor • False, he became professor of mathematics at the age of 26

10. ISAAC NEWTON • What other jobs did Isaac do during his life?

11. ISAAC NEWTON • During the plague of 1665 he didn’t do any research at all. • False, it was in this period he wrote his best works and made most of his discoveries.

12. ISAAC NEWTON • His Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, known simply as Principia is recognized as the greatest scientific book ever written. • True, in it we can find the law of universal gravitation

13. ISAAC NEWTON • What are some of his other works?

14. ISAAC NEWTON • Isaac wasn’t at all religious, in fact he was an atheist • False, he was very religious, in fact, in his lifetime he wrote more theological essays than scientific ones

15. ISAAC NEWTON • What were Isaac’s ideas on religion? Find as many elements as you can.

16. ISAAC NEWTON • He studied alchemy • True, he was obsessed by it; he studied all the books on it that he could obtain and spent time on end in his laboratory trying to turn base metals into gold

17. ISAAC NEWTON • His “White Light Theory” was accepted by his scientific peers with enthusiasm • False, he was often criticised by his peers.

18. ISAAC NEWTON • Isaac never suffered any mental or physical illnesses. • False, he suffered from nervous breakdowns, probably caused by poisoning by all the mercury he was exposed to during his alchemical experiments or perhaps because he was the victim of a bipolar disorder

19. ISAAC NEWTON • In the archives of London's Royal Society there was a manuscript containing the truth about Newton’s apple story. It is the manuscript for what would become a biography of Newton entitled Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's Life written by William Stukeley, an archaeologist and one of Newton's first biographers, and published in 1752. Newton told the apple story to Stukeley, who relayed it as such: • "After dinner, the weather being warm, we went into the garden and drank thea, under the shade of some apple trees...he told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. It was occasion'd by the fall of an apple, as he sat in contemplative mood. Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground, thought he to himself..."

20. ISAAC NEWTON • So it turns out the apple story is true - for the most part. The apple may not have hit Newton in the head, but we can still picture it that way!

21. ISAAC NEWTON • Isaac predicted the end of the world • True, he predicted that the world will end no later than 2060, using biblical references:  " . . . not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men . . .”