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| Ma Sau-ying (Translation by Wong Wing-hung & Janny Leung) | |
Newton's father died three months before his birth. Two years later, her mother married again and Newton was then brought up by his grandmother. When Newton was 12, he entered Kings School with the help of his uncle's financial support. But Newton was not a clever boy. His academic performance was bad. He was unhealthy, quiet and he daydreamt a lot. He was in no way outstanding. Newton's genius was awakened by a senseless kick on him by a rude classmate. Newton fought with the classmate and won. However, that rude classmate performed much better than Newton in studying. Newton then therefore determined to work hard in order to overtake him. At a result, Newton was not only ranked top in Kings School, he also entered Trinity College of Cambridge University. In 1665, when Newton had just completed his bachelor's degree, a terrible bubonic plague was spreading in Europe, so Newton had to return to his home village. At home, Newton made a prism to analyse sunlight and found out the seven colours in sunlight. He also discovered the differences between the refractive indices of different colours. However, strangely enough, he did not say even a word about his unusual discovery. It was because he knew that he was only a university student. Disclosing a revolutionary discovery might irritate professors. Nevertheless, he made the discovery known to the public five years later when he was promoted to professor. During the days in his home village, he had even invented integration and widely applied it to physics and geometry. On one night, when he was meditating under an apple tree, an apple suddenly fell on the ground. He then discovered that all things without suspension fall down. He then discovered that there is an attraction between any pair of objects and the attraction is inversely proportional to the distance between them. He concluded the Law of Universal Gravitation. However, due to his eccentric and stubborn character, he did not publish this theory until twenty years later. Newton also conducted in-depth studies and numerous experiments on Galileo and others' work. He eventually concluded the three laws of motion, upon which classical mechanics was founded. Newton then became the founder of classical mechanics. | |||