Noreen's
PERSONAL BLOG & JOURNAL

​

        Discoveries and inventions extend the boundaries of human knowledge, experience and capability. It may be an improvement upon a machine or product or a new process for creating an object or a result. The result may either lead to a failure or a radical breakthrough. If deemed to be a success, the innovation would then be adopted by people and passed on to others. Do you ever wonder why people, buildings, air and water are kept from floating into space? It’s because of Gravity. It’s the force that holds everything in the universe together. When we speak of gravity, two personalities instantly click the mind, Einstein and Newton. Both are mainly known for their space and time concept. These two geniuses have many similarities and differences lying in between them.

 

        Let’s start with their early lives. Sir Isaac Newton was born on January 4, 1643, in Woolsthorpe, England. His father was a prosperous local farmer, also named Isaac Newton and his mother was named Hannah Ayscough Newton. His father died three months before he was born which eventually led to his mother remarrying a well-to-do minister, Barnabas Smith. Newton was now left with his maternal grandmother. Newton had been enrolled at the King's School in Grantham, a town in Lincolnshire, where he lodged with a local apothecary and was introduced to the fascinating world of chemistry. This was also against his mother’s plan to make him a farmer so he was pulled out of school. After failing at farming, he soon went back to King’s school and finishes his basic education. Newton’s uncle, a graduate of the University of Cambridge's Trinity College, persuaded his mother to have him enter the university. During his first three years at Cambridge, Newton was taught the standard curriculum but was fascinated with the more advanced science. It was during this time that Newton kept a second set of notes, entitled "Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae" ("Certain Philosophical Questions"). The "Quaestiones" reveal that Newton had discovered the new concept of nature that provided the framework for the Scientific Revolution. This marks the start of Newton’s life as an established physicist and mathematician, and him being credited as one of the great minds of the 17th century Scientific Revolution.

 

         On the other hand, Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 in Ulm, Württemberg, Germany to a secular Jewish family. His father, Hermann Einstein, was a salesman and engineer who with his brother founded Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie and his mother, Paulin Koch, was a housewife. Einstein attended elementary school at the Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich. He struggled in the institution and had speech challenges but despite that he developed a passion for classical music and playing the violin. In the late 1880’s, Max Talmud, a Polish medical student became Einstein’s tutor. He introduced Einstein to a children’s science text that inspired him to dream about the nature of light. This led to his journey in becoming the most influential physicist of the 20th century and the development of the general theory of relativity.

 

          Newton and Einstein both talked about the relationship between time and space but with different views. For Newton, time and space are absolute. Space is boundless, static, free from any complexity and completely empty while time is constant and similar to an unchangeable flow. According to Einstein, time and space are bounded. Time and space are completely twisted into one another and make one absolute truth. The motions of energy and matter actually support this since it states time and space are being shaped.

 

          Both also have different takes on the gravitational theory. In 1687, Newton stated that “Gravity really does exist”. Before Newton, no one had heard of gravity. He was able to explain for the first time why the Moon stays in orbit around Earth. Newton’s theory can explain all everyday observations of gravity on Earth and in the heavens. Despite that, Newton could only describe gravity, but he didn’t know how it worked. On the other hand, Einstein came up with the theory of General Relativity. In this theory, Einstein agreed with Newton that space had dimension: width, length, and height but he didn’t believe that space was affected by the objects in it. To sum it up, General relativity describes gravity as spacetime curvature while Newtonian gravity describes it as something living on top of a static space with no curvature.

 

           Newton and Einstein also shared some similarities. Both of them were largely unsuccessful in their grade school and high school days but regardless of that both of them have sets of laws that are still used up to now.

 

          Every invention and discovery will help future scientists to build off what is already known and make an even greater leap in science. Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein are scientists who made a great impact on the society. Newton and Einstein's lives were alike in many ways, but the nature of their theories was very different. Due to their contributions to the field of Science, people still know that Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein are two of the greatest scientists of all time.