Did someone throw an apple at Newton?

Question

Or did it fall on its own?

Answer 1

I bought 10 apples home and now there's only 9.Hmmm.....

Answer 2

It seems not. A popular story claims that Newton was inspired to formulate his theory of universal gravitation by the fall of an apple from a tree. Cartoons have gone further to suggest the apple actually hit his head, and that this somehow made him aware of the ravity. This interpretation does not have basis, but the story of the apple may have something to it. John Conduitt, Newton's assistant at the royal mint and husband of Newton's niece, described the event when he wrote about Newton's life:

In the year 1666 he retired again from Cambridge ... to his mother in Lincolnshire & whilst he was musing in a garden it came into his thought that the power of gravity (which brought an apple from a tree to the ground) was not limited to a certain distance from earth, but that this power must extend much further than was usually thought. Why not as high as the Moon said he to himself & if so, that must influence her motion & perhaps retain her in her orbit, whereupon he fell a calculating what would be the effect of that supposition... (King's College, Cambridge, Keynes Ms. 130.4: Conduitt's account of Newton's life at Cambridge (c.1727-8) )

The question was not whether gravity existed, but whether it extended so far from Earth that it could be the force holding the moon to its orbit. Newton showed that if the force decreased as the inverse square of the distance, one could indeed calculate the Moon's orbital period, and get good agreement. He assumed the same force was responsible for other orbital motions, and hence named it universal gravitation. A contemporary writer, William Stukeley, recorded in his Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's Life a conversation with Newton in Kensington on 15 April 1726, in which Newton recalled "when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. It was occasioned 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. Why should it not go sideways or upwards, but constantly to the earth's centre." In similar terms, Voltaire wrote in his Essay on Epic Poetry (1727), "Sir Isaac Newton walking in his gardens, had the first thought of his system of gravitation, upon seeing an apple falling from a tree." These accounts are probably exaggerations of Newton's own tale about sitting by a window in his home (Woolsthorpe Manor) and watching an apple fall from a tree.

If it had been thrown it at him, it would not have sparked the same process because it would have been related to the laws of motion rather than gravity.

Answer 3

The whole apple hitting newton is just an illistration of how gravity works and who first stated scientific laws about it.

Its not actually thought that an apple hit him.

Answer 4

To quote my old Physics teacher: "Newton didn't invent gravity or the apple. Gravity made all that possible. Gravity made Newton and apple." To this day I still do not want to know what made him say that.

Answer 5

If anybody did throw an Apple at Newton, he is an unsung hero.

Answer 6

I don't think Newton discovered the law of gravitation because of the apple. it is just a story made to make physics interesting. there are many other stories too. i don't think they r real.

Answer 7

Supposedly, he was sitting under an apple tree, and an apple dropped on his head, but this is almost certainly a myth.

Answer 8

Perhaps we should throw a few apples of our own, metophorically speaking of ocurse

Answer 9

Most Likely someone did, he stole, (sorry ) borrowed, so many theories, from so many mathematicians. ( even Dead ones and called them his own). So I guess he had many things thrown at him esp curses.

Answer 10

Yes , the tree under which he was lying.