Chapter 6
The Law of Universal Gravitation
PART I : A BRIEF HISTORY OF GRAVITATION
6.1 NEWTON AND THE APPLE AND THE MOON
We have all heard the story that Newton was led to the law of universal gravitation while watching an apple fall to the ground. This story has become as much a landmark in the history of science as the discovery that followed it. We shall piece together relevant parts of the story to make a story of our own and make a picture of the mind of a genius that saw in such an insignificant event a glimpse of a much larger scheme of the universe that works behind the motion of the moon around the earth, the motion of the planets around the sun, as much as in the falling of an apple, unifying all such diverse and unrelated phenomena ...
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