My Science School

Isaac Newton was appointed as the warden of the Royal Mint in 1696. He received the position on the recommendation of Charles Montague, a well-known politician of the time. The prestigious post was intended as a reward for Newton’s scientific achievements.

Newton took up the position at a crucial time as England was in the process of changing its silver coinage prevalent from the time of Elizabeth I. As these coins had a smooth edge, people could easily clip small amounts of silver from them and still use the same coin. Making counterfeit coins was also a common occurrence. Newton took a firm stance on counterfeiting. He cracked down on the group of thieves known as clippers who clipped off small pieces of coins, melted down the metal and extracted the silver.

Under Newton’s wardenship, auxiliary mints were set up on different parts of the country. He supervised the processing of new coins and its distribution to various banks across the country. Newton was so successful that in 1699, within 3 years of his appointment, he was made the Master of the Royal Mint.

Isaac Newton became the president of the Royal Society in 1703. The 60-year-old Newton undertook responsibilities with his characteristic determination and energy. In the preceding years the Society had a series of politicians as its presidents. They were not concerned about the Society’s aims and the weekly meetings were no longer based on the scientific interests which laid the foundation of the Society.

Once Newton took charge, he devoted his time to bring the Society back to its old grandeur. He developed a scheme and methodology for conducting its meetings. According to the scheme, weekly meetings would have to be held, where serious discussions would take place. Moreover, he also made a provision for people with good scientific reputations to give demonstrations at the meetings. This succeeded in increasing the attendance and improving the quality of the deliberations.

The Royal Society became stronger during and following the 24 years of Newton’s presidentship. He played a significant role in making the Society into the world-famous organization it is today. However, Newton is also said to have exploited his position as the president to make public his disagreements with scientists such as John Flamsteed, the astronomer.

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Newton was invited to join the Royal Society in early 1672. The Society had distinguished personalities such as Robert Boyle and Christopher Wren as its members at the time. Newton had seen the invitation to join as a great honour.

He found a rival of his rank at the Society. It was Robert Hooke, who had been a member of the Royal Society right from its start. Hooke was a brilliant and inventive man whose mind moved from discipline to discipline, making discovery after discovery.

Though Hooke was mainly interested in mechanics, he built amazing microscopes and researched the structure of the plant cell. He was also a gifted inventor who created dozens of devices ranging from an early form of the telegraph to a diving bell.

He had also ventured into the study of combustion, musical notes and the nature of light, the last of which became the bone of contention between Hooke and Newton. The conflict between the duo began with conflicting opinions about the nature of white light. Newton presented his first paper to the Royal Society in February 1672, in which he detailed his work on the nature of light and advanced his theory that white light was a composite of all the colours of the spectrum. Newton asserted that light was composed of particles.

Hooke had his own ideas about the nature of light. He believed that light travelled in waves, in contradiction to Newton’s belief. Hooke was critical of Newton’s paper.

He went on to attack Newton’s methodology and conclusions. Hooke was certainly not the only person to take a critical stand. Huygens, the great Danish scientist and a number of French Jesuits also raised objections. However, due to his work in the same field and prominence within the society, Hooke’s remarks were the most cutting.

Newton responded to the criticism by being angry and defensive. This came to be his characteristic response to any critique of his work.

The Royal Society was the leading national organization for the promotion of scientific research in Britain. It is also the oldest national scientific society in the world.

The origin of the society can be traced back to November 28, 1660, when twelve men met. They decided to set up a College for promoting ‘Physico-Mathematicall Experimentall Learning’. These men included scientist Robert Boyle, architect Christopher Wren, Bishop John Wilkins and the courtiers Sir Robert Moray and William, 2nd Viscount Brouncker.

Brouncker went on to become the first president of the Royal Society. King Charles II granted a royal charter for it as ‘The Royal Society’. Through the royal charter the society got an institutional structure- a president, treasurer, secretaries, and council. The society has always remained a voluntary organization, independent of the British state despite receiving royal patronage from the beginning.

The conduct and communication of science was revolutionized by the Society. In 1665 itself, Hooke’s Micrographia and the first issue of Philosophical Transactions were published. Philosophical Transactions is now the oldest continuously-published science journal in the world.

The Royal Society also published Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica, and Benjamin Franklin’s kite experiment demonstrating the electrical nature of lightning.

Newton was a mathematics professor at Trinity College, Cambridge. But he was not a successful teacher. Newton preferred to spend his time alone in the laboratory, which he built himself, or in the small garden outside his rooms.

Only a few students attended his classes and fewer still understood what he said. A secretary later commented that often, Newton ended up teaching his walls with no students in front of him!

Not even one student who studied mathematics under Newton in the thirty years of his teaching career dedicated himself to the study of mathematics.

Newton’s absent-mindedness was also well known. He would sometimes stay in bed an entire day pondering upon a particular problem. If he received visitors while he was immersed in a new idea, Newton would simply walk into another room to continue thinking; completely forgetting that somebody was awaiting him in the other room.

By the 1670s, Trinity College became a lonely place for him. He enjoyed the brotherhood of similar minds and hence, he eagerly accepted the offer to join the Royal Society.

The English version of Opticks: or A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light was published in 1704. A Latin translation of the book appeared in 1706. This is Newton’s second major book on physical science. It analyses the fundamental nature of light.

The book covers discoveries and theories concerning light and colour made by Newton in 33 years. It deals with ideas ranging from the spectrum of sunlight to the invention of the reflecting telescope. It also includes the first workable theory of the rainbow and the first colour circle in the history of colour theory. Newton also discusses various other subjects such as metabolism, blood circulation and a study of the haunting experiences of the mentally ill.

One of the major impacts of Opticks was that it overthrew the idea that ‘pure’ light (such as sunlight) is white or colourless, and it becomes coloured by mixing with darkness caused by interactions with matter. Newton showed that this assumption from the time of Aristotle and Theophrastus was wrong.

Newton also illustrated that colour is a result of the physical property of light, as each hue is refracted at a characteristic angle by a prism or lens. He also added that colour is a sensation within the mind and not an inherent property of material objects or of light itself. Considering the impact of the book on science, it is astonishing to think that it was initially published anonymously with just the initials I.N. at the end of an advertisement at the front of the book.

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Images from space that show Earth as nothing more than a blur of blue tug at our hearts in a way that can’t be put into words. The ones that you see here, while evoking such emotions, are also iconic in their own right. This is because they show the first human ever to walk untethered in space. The subject of these photographs is NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless II.

Born in Boston in 1937, McCandless did his schooling at Long Beach, California and received his Bachelor of Science degree from the United States Naval Academy in 1958. He then obtained his Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1965, and eventually also ended up with a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Houston in 1987.

Communicator role

A retired U.S. Navy captain, McCandless was one of 19 astronauts selected by NASA in April 1966. He served as the mission control communicator for Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin during their famous 1969 Apollo 11 mission, which included the first human landing on the moon. McCandless, in fact, famously felt let down by Armstrong as the latter hadn’t revealed ahead what he had planned to say while setting foot on the moon.

McCandless flew as the mission specialist on two space shuttles, STS-41B in 1984 and STS-31 in 1990. While the 1984 mission saw him become the first human to perform an untethered spacewalk, he helped deploy the Hubble Space Telescope during the 1990 mission.

Helps develop MMU

Apart from these, McCandless also served as a member of the astronaut support crew for the Apollo 14 mission and was a backup pilot for the first crewed Skylab mission. For the M-509 astronaut manoeuvring experiment that was flown in the Skylab programme, McCandless was a co-investigator. He collaborated on the development and helped design what came to be known as the MMU – manned manoeuvring unit.

The STS-41B was launched on February 3, 1984. Four days later, on February 7, McCandless stepped out of the space shuttle Challenger into nothingness. As he moved away from the spacecraft, he floated freely without any earthly anchor.

"Heck of a big leap for me"

“It may have been a small step for Neil, but it’s a heck of a big leap for me,” were McCandless’ first words. If the mood at mission control had been apprehensive before, the raucous laughter that followed this comment certainly reduced the tension - a fact that was confirmed by his wife, who was also at mission control. McCandless would later say that his comment was consciously thought out and that it was his way of saying things were going okay, apart from getting back at Armstrong for not revealing his words in 1969.

The images that were shot then, showing McCandless spacewalking without tethers, gained widespread fame. The spacewalk was the first time the MMU that he helped develop was used. These nitrogen-propelled, hand-controlled devices afforded much greater mobility to their users as opposed to restrictive tethers used by previous spacewalkers.

Fellow astronaut Robert L. Stewart later tried out the MMU that McCandless first used. Two days later, both of them tried another similar unit with success. By February 11, the STS-41B mission was complete as the Challenger safely landed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre.

In one of his last interviews, before his death in December 2017, McCandless told National Geographic what he had probably told countless others who wanted to know how it was out there.

Fun, but cold

While he always maintained that it was fun, he also adds that the single thing that disturbed him as he moved away from the shuttle was that he got extremely cold, with shivers and chattering teeth.

The reason for that is pretty straightforward. While he had prepared for that moment for years, he wasn’t prepared for the temperature in the suit. As the suit was designed to keep astronauts comfortable while working hard in a warm environment, even the H (hot) position on the life support system actually provided minimal cooling. Considering that McCandless wasn’t really performing strenuous labour during the first hours of his untethered spacewalk, he felt cold. That’s a small price to pay for becoming the first-ever human to walk freely in space.

 

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Plastic pollution from discarded fishing gear in the Ganges River poses a threat to wildlife such as the critically endangered three-striped Ganges river dolphin. The fishing nets - all made of plastic – were the most common type of gear found.

"Ingesting plastic can harm wildlife, but our threat assessment focussed on entanglement, which is known to injure and kill a wide range of marine species," said Sarah Nelms, University of Exeter, UK.

The researchers used a list of 21 river species of "conservation concern" identified by the Wildlife Institute of India in Uttarakhand.

They combined existing information on entanglements of similar species worldwide with the new data on levels of waste fishing gear in the Ganges to estimate which species are most at risk.

The findings offer hope for solutions based on “circular economy" where waste is dramatically reduced by reusing materials. A high proportion of the fishing gear found was made of nylon 6, which can be used to make products including carpets and clothing. Collection and recycling of nylon 6 has strong potential as a solution because it would cut plastic pollution and provide an income.

 

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Animals that that have a magnetic 'sixth sense include sea turtles, birds, fish, and lobsters, Specific species use this ability as a navigation tool, such as sea turtles that are, impressively, able to return to the location of their birthplace.

Researchers propose that the magnetic sense comes from a symbiotic relationship with magnetotactic bacteria, a special type of bacteria whose movement is influenced by magnetic fields, including that of Earth's.

Magnetotactic bacteria are associated with many animals, including a penguin species, loggerhead sea turtles, bats and Atlantic right whales. It is still not known where in these animals the bacteria would live, but it may well be associated with nervous tissue, like the eye or brain.

Learning how organisms interact with magnetic fields can improve humans' understanding of how to use Earth's magnetic fields for their own navigation purposes.

 

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Researchers have named a type of burrowing frog Sphaerotheca Bengaluru to highlight the gap in the documentation of amphibians from non-forested areas and the need to restore frog habitats in Bengaluru.

The discovery of the new species in an unexpected location not only indicates that the city is home to other uncatalogued species, but has also come as a warning on the pollution of water bodies.

The frog was found outside normal habitats, in a barren tract of land near Rajankunte where there is no permanent source of water. "This genus of frog is generally located around freshwater areas or in forested landscapes. Water is vital to the completion of their life cycle," said Dr K. P. Dinesh of the Zoological Survey of India. The presence of the new frog, which has not been found in or around any of the city's water bodies, suggests that they could have become uninhabitable for the new species. "They are the first to be affected by water pollution and their behaviour tells us about the quality of an ecosystem," Dr Dinesh added.

 

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Astronomer Edmond Halley persuaded Newton to expand his studies. Halley was the driving force behind the publication. He acted as a critic as well as supporter for this work.

Edmond Halley even convinced Newton to allow him to edit the Principia. Halley covered the various expenses, corrected the proofs himself, and ultimately got Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica printed in 1687.

Newton was famously reluctant to publish his works. Without Edmond Halley’s compulsion to publish Principia, Newton may have never become an outstanding figure in the history of science.

Newton would probably be known only for his mathematics and optics, and remain a relatively obscure professor in Cambridge.

Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Latin for Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) is often simply referred to as Principia. This work in three books, written by Isaac Newton in Latin was first published on 5 July 1687. In retrospect, its publication was a landmark event in the development of modern physics and astronomy.

Newton published two more editions in 1713 and 1726 after annotating and correcting his personal copy of the first edition. Principia contains the laws of motion, law of universal gravitation and a derivation of Kepler’s laws of planetary motion (Kepler originally obtained these empirically). The work also forms the foundation of classical mechanics. Principia is considered as one of the most important works in the history of science.

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The significance of the Newtonian reflector does not lie in the discovery of new celestial bodies or celestial phenomena. Newton neither discovered the moons around Jupiter like Galileo nor did he plot the return of a comet - like Halley. However, the Newtonian reflector and Newton’s theory of universal gravitation made an invaluable contribution: they tied together Mathematics, Astronomy, and our understanding of the universe.

He mathematically established that gravitation was a two-way operation. While the Earth pulled on a falling apple, the apple too pulled on Earth. This was seen, calculated and confirmed in the motions of heavenly bodies. It was made possible by the science of the reflector telescopes which can be credited to Newton. The work of Copernicus and Galileo were carried through by Newton and his telescope.

While it is commonly assumed that Newton invented the first reflector telescope, claims to the contrary are also there. The Italian monk Niccolo Zucchi claimed to have experimented with the idea as far back as 1616. It is possible that Newton read James Gregory’s 1663 book Optica Promota which contained designs for a reflecting telescope using mirrors. Gregory had been trying to build such a telescope, but he did not succeed. Ultimately, Newton’s telescope was the one that worked well and brought reflectors to the scientific world.

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The first successful practical reflecting telescope was built by Newton. Until then telescopes were large unwieldy instruments. The design of the telescope was recast by Newton on the basis of his theory of optics. He used mirrors instead of lenses and the result was a new telescope 10 times smaller than the traditional ones.

Earlier also many efforts were made to make more powerful telescopes using larger lenses. They were unsuccessful as the lens kept producing coloured rainbows around bright objects like the Moon and the planets. The coloured fringes formed due to the unequal refraction of colours by the lens were unavoidable in simple telescopes.

Newton was under the assumption that no lens could rectify this issue. Though this was a mistaken assumption, it led him to use a mirror to form an image and thereby to build a reflecting telescope. This is now called the Newtonian reflector. A curved mirror brings rays of light to a focus and forms an image by reflection (whereas a lens does it by bending or refraction). Some of the largest telescopes used today are based on the telescope made by Newton in 1668.

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The laws of motion are applicable even in outer space. Newton’s Second Law states that force is needed to increase or decrease the speed of a body. This implies that astronauts must learn to push themselves through their spacecraft, or else they will float around helplessly. They also need to remember to stop themselves as they near their destination or else they’ll keep moving till they hit something.

During their first attempt, astronauts usually end up a little worse for the wear after stumbling around the spacecraft. Unlike humans, animals flown to space often fail to learn this. A set of new-born quails aboard Russia’s Mir space station couldn’t adapt to life in space and died in a few days. Newton’s Third Law too has application for astronauts. The law states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. While turning a screw, astronauts have to anchor themselves to a wall, or else they’ll be the ones twisting. Even the mildest action like typing at a computer keyboard will send an astronaut floating away. To remedy this problem, workstation on the international space station has restraining loops for the crew to anchor their feet.

Though it may seem like the laws of motion are different in space and on Earth that is not the case. The overwhelming force of Earth’s gravitational field simply masks its exact effects. Gravity plays an astonishing part in many phenomena we take for granted. For instance, hot air (which is lighter than cool air) rises, and a convection current is formed which enables natural air circulation in our houses. In space however, nothing is lighter than anything else and ordinary convection currents do not exist. Thus, to make sure that the astronauts don’t suffocate due to carbon dioxide accumulation, a ventilation fan is installed to facilitate air circulation.

The International Space Station is a perfect example of the laws of motion. Though intuition and common-sense points otherwise, Newton realized that a bullet shot from a gun should continue to move indefinitely. On Earth, atmospheric friction slows the projectile while gravitational force pulls it to the ground. But the faster the bullet is shot, the farther it will travel before falling. And if you can manage to shoot something at a speed of around 11.2 km/s, it will never finish its trajectory. It will instead orbit the Earth in a state of perpetual free fall. This particular velocity (11.2 km/s) cancels the pull of Earth’s gravity and is used to launch spacecraft.

Even fire is not exempt from the laws of motion in space. Behaviour of weightless flames is rather different from those on Earth. However, such a fire is best limited to the lab as fire aboard a spacecraft can have catastrophic effects.