Issac Newton

(1643-1727)
◼ If anyone can be called “the founder of modern
science”, then it should be Newton.

◼ At the age of 25, during 18 months when

Cambridge University was closed because of an
epidemic of plague, Newton
 developed mathematical calculus;
 founded optics, the science of light
propagation;
 initiated his work on (what is now called
Newtonian) mechanics.
◼ He was made the Lucasian Professor of
Mathematics at Trinity College at the age of 26.

◼ Three years after that he was elected to the

Royal Society of London, and he spent the rest of
his scientific career participating in various
committees and meetings.

◼ His main work is called Philosophiae Naturalis

Principia Matematica (The Mathematical
Principles of Natural Philosophy), or, in short,
Principia. It was published in 1687.
Newton as a Person
◼ He was very closed and unapproachable,
constantly in fear of competition or of being
proven wrong. Never-the-less, his friends
remained loyal to him all life long.
◼ He rigged a formal resolution of his argument
with Leibnitz about who first invented calculus.
◼ He published a draft of Flamsteed’s book without
permission.
◼ At the age of 50 he suffered a mental breakdown
and spent the rest of his life as a head of British
Mint – a mere sinecure.
Newton’s Laws of Motion
◼ He described his three laws of motion in
Principia.
◼ Newton’s laws form the foundation of all physics.
◼ Einstein’s Theory of Relativity extends Newton’s
laws to the limit of very high speeds and very
strong gravity, but it does not overrule them.
◼ Quantum Mechanics extends Newton’s laws to
the world of elementary particles, but it remains
consistent with them.
First Law
 An object at rest or in a state of uniform
motion will remain at rest or in uniform
motion, unless acted upon by a net external
force

◼ This is also known as the law of inertia. Inertial

motion is a motion with the constant velocity.
Thus, a force always produces a change in
velocity, or, in other words, an acceleration.
Second Law
 The acceleration of an object is proportional
to the net force applied to it.

◼ The coefficient of proportionality is called the

inertial mass. Mathematically, the second law
is expressed like this:
Linear Momentum
◼ A linear momentum is a very important
characteristic of an object in mechanics. It is a
product of the object's mass and its velocity:

◼ You can think of it as of a measure of inertia.

Linear Momentum II
◼ Change in velocity is acceleration:

◼ Change in momentum is then the force:

Conservation of Momentum
◼ Important case: in the absence of the net
external force the linear momentum of an object
is conserved.

◼ This is called the law of conservation of

momentum. It is more general than the law of
inertia, because it is a combination of the first
and the second Newton's laws .
Question:
◼ An empty, freely rolling boxcar is suddenly
loaded from the top with a load of coal twice the
mass of an empty boxcar. How will the speed of
the boxcar change?

2T

1T 1T 3T

v ?
◼ A: It will not change.

◼ B: It will be half of the original speed.

◼ C: It will be third of the original speed.

◼ D: It will be twice the original speed.

Newton’s Third Law
◼ For every action, there is an equal and opposite
reaction.

◼ Example: If object A
exerts a force on
object B, then object B
exerts an equal and
opposite force on object A.
Newton’s Third Law

Guess the outcome…

Newton’s Third Law
Newton’s Third Law
The Law of Gravity
◼ At the time of Newton it was perfectly
understood that there existed a force called
“gravity” that made all objects fall to the ground.
◼ Newton conjectured that the same force was
responsible for the Moon orbiting the Earth and
the planets orbiting the Sun.
◼ If that was indeed the case, the acceleration
acting on the Moon should be about 3600
weaker than the acceleration of objects to fall to
the ground.
◼ Since the distance to the Moon was about 60
times the size of the Earth, the force of gravity
had to obey the inverse square law:

◼ Using the inverse square law for the gravitational

force, Newton was able to derive all three
Kepler's law of planetary motions.
◼ Using additional arguments, Newton finally arrived
at the formula that gives the force of gravity
between two objects with masses M1 and M2:

where R is the distance between two objects, and

G is a fundamental constant, i.e. a number that
is the same at all times and everywhere in the
universe.
If one of the objects is much larger than the other
(as, for example, the case of the Sun and a
planet), then the mass of the larger object is
usually denoted by M, and the mass of the smaller
object is denoted by m:
Measuring G
◼ Newton’s gravitational constant G is by far the
worst known fundamental constant:
3
m
G = (6.6726  0.0003)  10−11
kg s2
◼ The reason for that is that gravity can be measured
very precisely, but it always comes as GM, but it is
very hard to measure masses of various objects
accurately. We do know GM8 for the Sun better:
3
m
GM8 = 1.32712440018(8)  1020 2
s
◼ Now we can understand why all the objects fall to
the ground with the same acceleration (and, thus,
in the same time, if they fall from the same height).
◼ From Newton’s Second Law:

◼ m can be cancelled on both side, so it disappears.

There is no m any more in this equation, which
means that g is independent on the mass of a falling
object. At the surface of the Earth

Oops! Do we have a problem?

◼ In the equation:

G is constant (does not change no matter what), M

is the mass of the Earth (does not change until the
next asteroid impact), but R is the distance to the
center of the Earth, and it can change.
◼ On Skydeck (Willis/Sears Tower) we are 412
meters further from the center of the Earth, and
we therefore should weight less on Skydeck than
on the ground.

Question: True or false?

Gravitational vs Inertial Mass
Recall: all objects fall to the ground with the same
acceleration, because the gravity force is
proportional to the mass:

But who said that two little m(s) are the same?
◼ Inertial mass is a measure of inertia, it enters the
Second Law of Newton:

◼ Gravitational mass is a measure of how a body

reacts to the force of gravity:

There is no a priori reason why these two should

be the same!
(Weak) Equivalence Principle
◼ Equality of inertial and gravitational masses is
called a (weak) equivalence principle: inertial
and gravitational masses are equivalent.

◼ Equivalence principle has been verified

experimentally.
Tests of Equivalence Principle
◼ 1590, Galileo Galilei: 1 part in 50
◼ 1686, Isaac Newton: 1 part in 1,000
◼ 1832, Friedrich Bessel: 1 part in 50,000
◼ 1908, Baron von Eotvos: 1 part in 100 million
◼ 1930, J. Renner: 1 part in 1 billion
◼ 1964, Dicke et al: 1 part in 100 billion
◼ 1972, Braginsky, Panov: 1 part in 1 trillion
◼ 2008, Adelberger et al: 1 part in 30 trillion
◼ 2013, Galileo: 1 part in 100 quadrillion
Energy
◼ Thomas Young (1773 – 1829) first coined the term
“energy”. He also disproved Newton’s corpuscular
theory of light.
◼ At the time of Newton, the concept of “energy”
existed. Leibnitz called it “vis viva”.
◼ Both, Leibnitz and Newton understood the process
of energy conversion – for example, the kinetic
energy of motion gets transformed into heat by
friction.
Many Faces of Energy
◼ Energy comes in many faces:
 Kinetic mv2/2
 Thermal (3/2)kT
 Gravitational -GM2/R
 Electromagnetic VE2/8p
 Rest energy mc2
 Nuclear
Dmc2
 Atomic
 Chemical En-Em
Many Faces of Energy
◼ Energy comes in many faces:
 Kinetic mv2/2
 Thermal (3/2)kT
 Gravitational -GM2/R
 Electromagnetic VE2/8p
 Rest energy mc2
 Nuclear
Dmc2
 Atomic
 Chemical En-Em
Conservation of Energy
◼ The conservation of energy implies that the sum of
all kinds of energy of a closed (i.e. not interacting
with something else) system is always conserved
(as long as the system exists).
◼ Any particular kind of energy does not have to be
conserved.

There are no exceptions to this law!!!

Never ever!!!
Nowhere!!!
◼ There is a fact, or if you wish, a law, governing natural
phenomena that are known to date. There is no known
exception to this law; it is exact, so far we know. The
law is called conservation of energy; it states that
there is a certain quantity, which we call energy, that
does not change in manifold changes which nature
undergoes. That is a most abstract idea, because it is
a mathematical principle; it says that there is a
numerical quantity, which does not change when
something happens. It is not a description of a
mechanism, or anything concrete; it is just a strange
fact that we can calculate some number, and when we
finish watching nature go through her tricks and
calculate the number again, it is the same.
—The Feynman Lectures on Physics
Binding Energy
◼ Energy has a sign – it can be positive or negative.
The absolute value of the negative energy is also
called binding energy.
◼ If an object has binding energy, some other energy
needs to be expended to disperse or destroy that
object.
◼ Gravitational energy is always negative (= binding);
nuclear/atomic, or chemical energy can be positive
or negative.
Gravitational Energy
◼ Gravitational energy is always binding – gravity
always pulls things together.

◼ If an objects gets more massive or smaller, then its

binding energy increases (total energy becomes
more negative).
◼ That results in production of some other energy.
Battery Powers a Bulb

What type of energy powers the bulb?

◼ A: Kinetic
◼ B: Thermal
◼ C: Electromagnetic
◼ D: Chemical
◼ E: Gravitational
Escape Velocity
◼ Conversely, to take a part of a gravitating object
away requires an expenditure of energy.
◼ To send a spaceship off the Earth (an asteroid off
the solar system, a star off a galaxy, …), the
expended energy should be converted into the
kinetic energy of motion.
◼ The speed that
corresponds to that
energy is called the
escape velocity.
“Dark Stars”
◼ In 1783 John Mitchell (a geologist) hypothesized
that if a star would compress to the size

then it would become invisible (a “dark star”)

because the light would not be able to escape its
gravity, .
◼ Laplace first promoted that idea independently in
his book, but then removed it from a later edition,
as the wave theory of light was gaining ground.
 More on Conservation Laws
◼ A major insight into the reason for the
existence of conservation laws was
made by Emily Noether (1882-1935)
– one of the first great female
scientists.
◼ Was an Assistant Professor
(equivalent) at Groningen University
in Germany since 1915; was never
promoted to the full professor.
◼ Emigrated to the US in 1933. Taught
at Bryn Mawr college.
 More on Conservation Laws
◼ Noether proved that each conservation law is
connected to a particular symmetry of space:
 Linear momentum is conserved when physical
laws are invariant wrt translation in space.
 Energy is conserved when physical laws are
invariant wrt translation in time.
 Angular momentum is conserved when physical
laws are invariant wrt rotation in space.
◼ Hence, conservation laws are the results of the
fundamental symmetries of space and time.
 More on Conservation Laws
◼ In particle physics there are other conservations
laws; they are the results of other fundamental
symmetries:
 conservation of electric charge: “gauge
invariance” (don’t ask me what it is).
 “CPT” symmetry (particle-antiparticle
symmetry): Lorenz invariance (translational
symmetry of space-time in Einstein’s theory of
relativity).
 Conservation of “color charge”..
 Conservation of lepton & baryon numbers…