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Isaac Newton (1642-1727): One of the World's Greatest Scientists

Source: Voice of America Special English

www.manythings.org/voa/people 

Isaac Newton (1642-1727): One of the World's Greatest Scientists

This is Shirley Griffith. And this is Steve Ember with the VOA Special English program, EXPLORATIONS.

Today we tell about one of the world's greatest scientists, Isaac Newton.

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Much of today's science of physics is based on Newton's discovery of the three laws of motion and his theory of gravity. Newton also developed one of the most powerful tools of mathematics. It is the method we call calculus.

Late in his life, Newton said of his work: "If I saw further than other men, it was because I stood on the shoulders of giants. "

One of those giants was the great Italian scientist, Galileo. Galileo died the same year Newton was born. Another of the giants was the Polish scientist Nicholas Copernicus. He lived a hundred years before Newton.

Copernicus had begun a scientific revolution. It led to a completely new understanding of how the universe worked. Galileo continued and expanded the work of Copernicus.

Isaac Newton built on the ideas of these two scientists and others. He found and proved the answers for which they searched.

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Isaac Newton was born in Woolsthorpe, England, on December twenty-fifth, sixteen forty-two.

He was born early. He was a small baby and very weak. No one expected him to survive. But he surprised everyone. He had one of the most powerful minds in history. And he lived until he was eighty-four.

Newton's father died before he was born. His mother married again a few years later. She left Isaac with his grandmother.

The boy was not a good student. Yet he liked to make things, such as kites and clocks and simple machines.

Newton also enjoyed finding new ways to answer questions or solve problems. As a boy, for example, he decided to find a way to measure the speed of the wind.

On a windy day, he measured how far he could jump with the wind at his back. Then he measured how far he could jump with the wind in his face. From the difference between the two jumps, he made his own measure of the strength of the wind.

Strangely, Newton became a much better student after a boy kicked him in the stomach.

The boy was one of the best students in the school. Newton decided to get even by getting higher marks than the boy who kicked him. In a short time, Newton became the top student at the school.

Newton left school to help on the family farm.

It soon became clear, however, that the boy was not a good farmer. He spent his time solving mathematical problems, instead of taking care of the crops. He spent hours visiting a bookstore in town, instead of selling his vegetables in the market.

An uncle decided that Newton would do better as a student than as a farmer. So he helped the young man enter Cambridge University to study mathematics.

Newton completed his university studies five years later, in sixteen sixty-five. He was twenty-two years old.

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At that time, a deadly plague was spreading across England. To escape the disease, Newton returned to the family farm. He did more thinking than farming. In doing so, he found the answers to some of the greatest mysteries of science.

Newton used his great skill in mathematics to form a better understanding of the world and the universe. He used methods he had learned as a boy in making things. He experimented. Then he studied the results and used what he had learned to design new experiments.

Newton's work led him to create a new method in mathematics for measuring areas curved in shape. He also used it to find how much material was contained in solid objects. The method he created became known as integral calculus.

One day, sitting in the garden, Newton watched an apple fall from a tree. He began to wonder if the same force that pulled the apple down also kept the moon circling the Earth. Newton believed it was. And he believed it could be measured.

He called the force "gravity. " He began to examine it carefully.

He decided that the strength of the force keeping a planet in orbit around the sun depended on two things. One was the amount of mass in the planet and the sun. The other was how far apart they were.

Newton was able to find the exact relationship between distance and gravity. He multiplied the mass of one space object by the mass of the other. Then he divided that number by the square of their distance apart. The result was the strength of the gravity force that tied them to each other.

Newton proved his idea by measuring how much gravity force would be needed to keep the moon orbiting the Earth. Then he measured the mass of the Earth and the moon, and the distance between them. He found that his measurement of the gravity force produced was not the same as the force needed. But the numbers were close.

Newton did not tell anyone about his discovery. He put it aside to work on other ideas. Later, with correct measurements of the size of the Earth, he found that the numbers were exactly the same.

Newton spent time studying light and colors. He used a three-sided piece of glass called a prism.

He sent a beam of sunlight through the prism. It fell on a white surface. The prism separated the beam of sunlight into the colors of a rainbow. Newton believed that all these colors -- mixed together in light -- produced the color white. He proved this by letting the beam of rainbow-colored light pass through another prism. This changed the colored light back to white light.

Newton's study of light led him to learn why faraway objects seen through a telescope do not seem sharp and clear. The curved glass lenses at each end of the telescope acted like prisms. They produced a circle of colored light around an object. This created an unclear picture.

A few years later, Newton built a different kind of telescope. It used a curved mirror to make faraway objects seem larger.

Light reflected from the surface of the mirror, instead of passing through a curved glass lens. Newton's reflecting telescope produced much clearer pictures than the old kind of telescope.

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Years later, the British astronomer Edmund Halley visited Newton. He said he wanted Newton's help in finding an answer to a problem no one had been able to solve. The question was this: What is the path of a planet going around the sun?

Newton immediately gave Haley the answer: an egg-shaped path called an ellipse.

Halley was surprised. He asked for Newton's proof. Newton no longer had the papers from his earlier work. He was able to recreate them, however. He showed them to Halley. He also showed Halley all his other scientific work.

Halley said Newton's scientific discoveries were the greatest ever made. He urged Newton to share them with the world.

Newton began to write a book that explained what he had done. It was published in sixteen eighty-seven. Newton called his book "The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy." The book is considered the greatest scientific work ever written.

In his book, Newton explains the three natural laws of motion. The first law is that an object not moving remains still. And one that is moving continues to move at an unchanging speed, so long as no outside force influences it.

Objects in space continue to move, because nothing exists in space to stop them.

Newton's second law of motion describes force. It says force equals the mass of an object, multiplied by the change in speed it produces in an object.

His third law says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

From these three laws, Newton was able to show how the universe worked. He proved it with easily understood mathematics. Scientists everywhere accepted Newton's ideas.

The leading English poet of Newton's time, Alexander Pope, honored the scientist with these words: "Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night. God said, --'Let Newton be!' - and all was light. "

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This Special English program was written by Marilyn Christiano and Frank Beardsley. This is Shirley Griffith. And this is Steve Ember.

Anorexics, Speak Up

Source: Speak Up

THE GUARDIAN

The new anorexics

Eating disorder experts are treating growing numbers of women who are developing anorexia or bulimia in adulthood, long after the teenage years when the conditions usually emerge.

Psychiatrists are seeing more patients who have become seriously ill with either of the crippling conditions for the first time in their 30s, 40s, 50s and occasionally 60s. In many cases, the illness has been triggered by a relationship breaking down, unemployment, the menopause, losing a parent, or seeing children leave home.

PRESSURE

Some experts say that the rise to what are called late-onset eating disorders as linked to the fact that some women in their 40s and 50s feel under pressure to look young. This is often due to the prominence of age-defying older female celebrities, such as Madonna and Sharon Stone.

“Five or 10 years ago, I would’ve seen one case of an older person developing an eating disorder about once every year or two. But now I see them more often – about five new patients a year with late-onset anorexia nervosa or bulimia,” Said Dr. Sylvia Dahabra, a psychiatrist in Newcastle who works for the regional specialist eating disorders service.

LEAVING HOME

Sian, who didn’t want to be fully indentified, tells the story of her mother, Fiona, who died of anorexia in 2008 aged 48. “The trauma of me moving out of the family home at 18 to live nearby, and then relocating further away to Bournemouth when I was 21, triggered her serious decline. I was pretty much mum’s life, and me leaving meant she was alone. She ended up weighing just six stone when she passed away when I was 21,” said Fiona died in her sleep after contracting bronchial pneumonia.

“Once she got the pneumonia, she couldn’t fight it because her body was so weak form the anorexia,” sad Sian.

DEPRESSION

Major like events are usually the cause of these disorders. “The person can lose their job, suffer bereavement, have a child or see their relationship break down. As a result, their mood deteriorates and they develop a depressive a illness. They lose their appetite and then lose weight, “said Dahabra.” They then notice that they feel better when they don’t eat, that they look better and might even get compliments. This distracts them from what really bothers them and gives them a new focus.” Dahabra has helped women who have developed dysfunctional eating behaviours after their husbands left them. “In one case the husband’s painting words to her were a derogatory comment about her weight. She associated the breakup with being overweight, began dieting. In the end she  was found unconscious at home and hospitalised because her blood sugar level was very dangerously low.”

DIETING

Dr Adrienne Key, the lead clinician for eating disorders treatment at the Priory clinic in Roehapton, south-west London said. “In the last 18 months I’ve seen 10 women in their mid-to late-30s, mainly with bulimia, who have had a baby in the previous few years and have had increased body dissatisfaction. They start dieting but then try more drastic measures such as skipping meals or going on these strange protein, no carbs diets, and then their starvation triggers the biology or an eating disorder.”

Why only some women who do that then develop anorexia or bulimia is not fully understood, but it may be because their brains function slightly differently under the pressure of food deprivation, said Key. “Growing numbers of women in their 30s and 40s are dissatisfied with their bodies because they are presented with visual imagery of perfect bodies especially in magazines. These unobtainable body ideals are often due to airbrushing, and women feel pressured to try to achieve that.

Mental health experts at the British Dietetic Association, which represents dieticians, have also noticed the same trend. Beat, the UK’s main eating disorders charity, is getting more calls from adults, mainly women.

NOT ONLY WOMEN

Men can succumb too. Dahabra has treated one man who developed depression and when anorexia in his 40s after grief at losing his mother. Another patient of the same age was under severe stress, first at work, and then after losing his job and supporting his partner through a serious illness. Lee Powell, a 37-years old civil servant in Gloucester, saw his weight drop from over10st to just over seven when obsessive exercise led him to start trying even harder to lose weight. “I used to have a cereal bar for breakfast and another of lunch and then some proper food for my tea, but that quickly became just a salad. My wife, Annette, once said I looked like something out of a prisoner of war camp and broke down crying.”

Experts are unsure whether the growing number of older onset cases they are treating indicates a real change in people behavior or simply GPs becoming better and identifying eating disorders.