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The major significance of Newton's work is that it overturned the dogma, attributed to Aristotle or Theophrastus and accepted by scholars in Newton's time, that "pure" light (such as the light attributed to the Sun) is fundamentally white or colourless, and is altered into color by mixture with darkness caused by interactions with matter ...
The publication of the law has become known as the "first great unification", as it marked the unification of the previously described phenomena of gravity on Earth with known astronomical behaviors. [1] [2] [3] This is a general physical law derived from empirical observations by what Isaac Newton called inductive reasoning. [4]
Newton then suggested in Qu. 18 and Qu. 19 that light propagates through vacuum via a very subtle "Aethereal Medium", just like heat was thought to spread. Although the previous hypotheses describe wave-like aspects of light, Newton still believed in particle-like properties.
During this period he investigated the refraction of light, demonstrating that the multicoloured image produced by a prism, which he named a spectrum, could be recomposed into white light by a lens and a second prism. [78] Modern scholarship has revealed that Newton's analysis and resynthesis of white light owes a debt to corpuscular alchemy. [79]
Lastly, Newton attempts to extend the results to the case where there is atmospheric resistance, considering first (Problem 6) the effects of resistance on inertial motion in a straight line, and then (Problem 7) the combined effects of resistance and a uniform centripetal force on motion towards/away from the center in a homogeneous medium ...
Newton's corpuscular theory of light was gradually succeeded by the wave theory. It was not until the 19th century that the quantitative measurement of dispersed light was recognized and standardized. As with many subsequent spectroscopy experiments, Newton's sources of white light included flames and stars, including the Sun.
Unification of theories about observable fundamental phenomena of nature is one of the primary goals of physics. [1] [2] [3] The two great unifications to date are Isaac Newton’s unification of gravity and astronomy, and James Clerk Maxwell’s unification of electromagnetism; the latter has been further unified with the concept of electroweak interaction.
Newton investigated the refraction of light, demonstrating that a prism could decompose white light into a spectrum of colours, and that a lens and a second prism could recompose the multicoloured spectrum into white light. He also showed that the coloured light does not change its properties by separating out a coloured beam and shining it on ...