The truth about the legend of an apple falling on Newton's head that the whole world has believed for the past 400 years

There is a very popular legend about Isaac Newton, which says that he realized the law of gravity after seeing an apple fall on his head. However, that is not necessarily true.

Isaac Newton is one of the greatest scientists in human history. For a long time, we have always heard the legend that when Newton was sitting under an apple tree, an apple fell on his head. That was the "golden moment" that made him suddenly think of the law of gravity - one of his most important studies. The interesting story has spread and made people always associate geniuses with apples, becoming a source of inspiration for creativity and learning anytime, anywhere.

In reality, did it really happen like that? Over the past 400 years, many people have turned the issue upside down and wondered how such a random event could be remembered in such detail. Was this just a fictional story to make the law of gravity more memorable and accessible?

Isaac Newton was born in 1642 near Grantham, England, the son of a farmer. He was admitted to England's most prestigious university, Cambridge, in 1661. Four years later, due to an outbreak of the bubonic plague, the school was temporarily closed, forcing Newton to move back to his childhood home, Woolsthorpe Manor. It was during this time that he was in the orchard and witnessed an apple fall from a tree. There is no evidence that the apple actually hit Newton on the head.

Isaac Newton.

But Newton's observation got him thinking about why apples always fall straight down (rather than sideways or upward). That experience actually helped inspire him to eventually develop his law of universal gravitation. In 1687, Newton first published this principle, which states that every object in the universe is attracted to every other object with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. The law was published in his landmark research paper, the Principia, which also described his three laws of motion.

In 1726, Newton shared the apple anecdote with William Stukeley, who included it in his 1752 biography, "Memoirs of the Life of Sir Isaac Newton." According to Stukeley, the anecdote about the apple falling on Newton's head is told quite simply: "After dinner, the weather being warm, we went into the garden to drink tea under the shade of some apple trees. He told me that he had been in a similar situation before when the idea of ​​gravitation had occurred to him. It was while the scientist was sitting in a meditative mood, an apple happened to fall."

The law of gravity is of great significance in the history of human physics.

So it turns out that the apple story is true, although not 100% true, but not imaginary . The apple may not have hit Newton on the head, but for the sake of visualization, many people have chosen to interpret the story that way.

In fact, Newton did not 'discover' gravity. According to Science, other researchers conducted experiments on it and tried to come up with a definition that explained why objects fall toward the ground instead of floating. Newton was simply the first person to write down a comprehensive law of universal gravitation.

The great mathematician and physicist died in 1727 and was buried in Westminster Abbey, London. His famous apple tree continues to grow at Woolsthorpe Manor in his country home. Generations of his family have cared for the only apple tree in the garden. In 1816, 'Newton's apple tree' fell during a storm. Some branches were removed, but a large part of the tree survived and grew back. Amazingly, the tree is still growing at Woolsthorpe Manor today and is now over 350 years old.

"Newton's apple tree" still stands after nearly four centuries.