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  Session: Physics Beyond the Core
  Paper Type: Poster
  Title: Why Sir Isaac Newton was Sitting Under the Apple Tree…
  Meeting: 2018 Summer Meeting: Washington, DC
  Location: N/A
  Date:
  Time: 2:00PM
  Author: Mikhail M. Agrest,, The Citadel,
843-953-1359, MAgrest@Citadel.edu
  Co-Author(s): None
  Abstract: When Sir Isaac Newton was sitting under the apple tree thinking about the Universe an apple fell on his head and he invented the first Newton's law… Was it Newton's acceptance of Rene Descartes' "Cogito ergo sum" ? Why in the world Sir Isaac Newton was still sitting under the apple tree thinking about the Universe instead of doing something useful to feed his family. Wasn't Newton himself giving credit for his first law to Galileo for seeing that the zero net force leads to rest, or uniform motion? It is essential that in teaching physics we bring to the students' attention that Newton's approach brought physics to the level of understanding of similarity of events that look very different and differences of events looking very much similar. Sir Isaac Newton didn't "invent calculus to solve mathematical problems," but to make concepts of physics be visible through similarity and differences.
  Footnotes: None
  Presentation: agrest_WhySirIsaac.pdf

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