Sir Isaac Newton Birthday: Google Doodle

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Isaac Newton Google Doodle

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uploaded by Jordan Yerman

Today's Google doodle commemorates the birthday of Sir Isaac Newton. Isaac Newton, born January 4, 1643, brought us the three laws of motion and the observation of universal gravitation, both described in Principia, one of the most influential works in scientific history. Isaac Newton showed that the planets are governed by the same gravitational laws as objects here on Earth, thus kicking the last nail in the coffin of geocentrism. The whole apple thing comes from a story which Isaac Newton often told, in which he watched an apple fall from a tree and wondered why it invariably fell straight down, and not sideways, or upwards. The popular depiction of the incident has the apple falling on Newton's head, but Newton himself never claimed such a fruit/skull collision.

Besides building the first working refracting telescope, Isaac Newton also helped develop modern calculus. Thanks, Isaac Newton, for contributing to my low math grades.