![]() The law of inertia states that at rest or in motion will remain at rest or in motion unless it’s acted upon by an external force. It was in this work that he first laid out his three laws of motion. In 1687, Newton published one of the most important scientific books in history, the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, commonly known as the Principa. Sir Isaac's Newton's 'Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica.' Photo: SSPL/Getty Images Newton’s laws of motion laid the groundwork for classical mechanics But when Newton refracted these same colors back onto another prism, they formed into a white light, proving that white light (and sunlight) was actually a combination of all the colors of the rainbow. Scientists already knew many of these colors existed, but they believed that the prism itself transformed white light into these colors. Working in his darkened room, he directed white light through a crystal prism on a wall, which separated into the seven colors we now know as the color spectrum (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet). He performed a seemingly endless series of experiments to prove his theories. Some even believed that the colors of the rainbow were formed by rainwater that colored the sky’s rays. He began working on his studies of light and color even before creating the reflecting telescope, although he presented much of his evidence several years later, in his 1704 book, Opticks.īefore Newton, scientists primarily adhered to ancient theories on color, including those of Aristotle, who believed that all colors came from lightness (white) and darkness (black). The next time you look up at a rainbow in the sky, you can thank Newton for helping us first understand and identify its seven colors. Newton helped develop spectral analysisĪ drawing of Sir Isaac Newton dispersing light with a glass prism. Newton’s simple telescope design is still used today, by both backyard astronomers and NASA scientists. In fact, his first model, which he built in 1668 and donated to England’s Royal Society, was just six inches long (some 10 times smaller than other telescopes of the era), but could magnify objects by 40x. Newton’s new “reflecting telescope” was more powerful than previous versions, and because he used the small mirror to bounce the image to the eye, he could build a much smaller, more practical telescope. He replaced the refracting lenses with mirrored ones, including a large, concave mirror to show the primary image and a smaller, flat, reflecting one, to display that image to the eye. ![]() This caused “chromatic aberrations,” or fuzzy, out-of-focus areas around objects being viewed through the telescope.Īfter much tinkering and testing, including grinding his own lenses, Newton found a solution. Known as refracting telescopes, they used glass lenses that changed the direction of different colors at different angles. Photo: Getty Imagesīefore Newton, standard telescopes provided magnification, but with drawbacks.
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