# What's the point of the Newton/apple story? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 13, 2017, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-the-newton-apple-story/796256 "2017-09-13T17:56:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-the-newton-apple-story/796256/1 "2017-09-13T17:56:46Z")
It’s always been presented as if he’s the first person to ever notice things fall straight down. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-the-newton-apple-story/796256/2 "2017-09-13T18:13:21Z")
> [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](#): > > It’s always been presented as if he’s the first person to ever notice things fall straight down. Maybe the first to ask why. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-the-newton-apple-story/796256/3 "2017-09-13T18:16:58Z")
Of course people had seen things fall forever, but know one really came up with an real explanation of why, much less one that would explain so much about the universe. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-the-newton-apple-story/796256/4 "2017-09-13T18:21:35Z")
Yeah, the point isn’t that he was the first to notice that things fall, it’s that this particular fall triggered a curiosity about “why?”, which lead to an understanding no one had presented before. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-the-newton-apple-story/796256/5 "2017-09-13T18:23:56Z")
It’s supposed to illustrate Newton’s breakthrough, which is that the force that pulls the apple to the ground is the same force that governs the motion of planets. People already knew (thanks to Kepler) that planets move around the Sun in elliptical orbits. People also knew that apples fell straight down from trees. Newton was the first to realize that the two were governed by the same forces and laws. See, if we assume that things travel in a straight line at constant speed unless acted upon by an external force - and we also assume that the Sun pulls Earth just like the Earth pulls the apple - that explains why the Earth’s trajectory is constantly bent back towards the Sun, resulting in an elliptical orbit. ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-the-newton-apple-story/796256/6 "2017-09-13T18:46:35Z")
Guys thanks for the replies. ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-the-newton-apple-story/796256/7 "2017-09-13T19:13:24Z")
The point of the story (whether or not it actually happened) isn’t that Newton noticed apples fall down; the point is that he asked himself “Why doesn’t the Earth fall up toward the apple?” At that point, anyone with Newton’s education knew the Earth was a giant ball of (mostly) rock, so it’s not a question you could easily get away from by saying “Well, the Earth is special”. And once he started thinking about that, it led to realizing that the falling apple (and minisculely rising Earth) followed the same laws as the Earth moving around the Sun. Which is a huge, huge, giant step forward in science-- even the planets follow understandable rules of physics, the same rules that apples and cricket balls follow, and humans can figure them out. So, whether or not there’s any truth to the story, it does mark a very big step forward in human understanding. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-the-newton-apple-story/796256/8 "2017-09-13T19:22:20Z")
> [@Quercus](#): > > So, whether or not there’s any truth to the story, it does mark a very big step forward in human understanding. It’s most likely true. There’s nothing unbelievable about the story and Newton told it to a number of people at the time. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-the-newton-apple-story/796256/9 "2017-09-13T19:26:54Z")
The “falling apple bonked him on the head and in the shock of the moment the universal theory of gravitation came to him in a flash” story sometimes shown in cartoons is apocryphal, however. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-the-newton-apple-story/796256/10 "2017-09-13T19:33:07Z")
> [@Myriam Miedzian](#): > > It is a universal fact of human existence that what we know best, that which forms part of our everyday mental landscape, is also that which we most take for granted, and question the least. And so some of the strongest jolts to our awareness, the deepest reorientations in our thought, often come from being confronted with the obvious. from _Boys Will Be Boys_ ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-the-newton-apple-story/796256/11 "2017-09-13T19:55:19Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > Maybe the first to ask why. Nope. Aristotle had a good reason, too: Solid and wet things naturally fall down, the same way fire and air naturally rise. That’s what their nature is, so that’s what they obey, possibly after using up some “impulse” granted to them by a good throw. This Aristotlean worldview is, apparently, the naïve intuition of most people, given how many of them think space ships stop when their engines go out, or have serious problems with the notion of inertia in general. “Impulse”, the fictional finite quality which fuels motion, is exactly what you observe on a planet with air and gravity and friction, and it takes some imagination to see that straight-line motion (or, depending on reference frame\*, a complete dead stop) is natural and “falling” and “slowing down” are things you only do when there’s some external conditions forcing your to change your motion. \*(The idea of a frame of reference long predates Newton. What Newton didn’t have, and didn’t need because he was long removed from Maxwell and Lorentz and Michelson and Morley, was the notion of a speed of light independent of the velocity of the observer and, therefore, a four-dimensional spacetime where all space-time planes have hyperbolic geometry which makes velocity addition more complex than v = v1 + v2. Of course, if you take the low-speed limit of Einstein’s equations, they agree fully with the simple equations; that’s one way you know Einstein’s work is correct: All new theories must successfully explain all phenomena which the old theory successfully explained.) ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-the-newton-apple-story/796256/12 "2017-09-13T21:17:50Z")
The point varies slightly depending on which of the early sources you turn to. William Stukeley’s [account](http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/OTHE00001) is: > [@](#): > > after dinner, the weather being warm, we went into the garden, & drank thea under the shade of some appletrees, only he, & myself. amidst other discourse, he told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. “why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground,” thought he to him self: occasion’d by the fall of an apple, as he sat in a comtemplative mood: “why should it not go sideways, or upwards? but constantly to the earths centre? assuredly, the reason is, that the earth draws it. there must be a drawing power in matter. & the sum of the drawing power in the matter of the earth must be in the earths center, not in any side of the earth. therefore dos this apple fall perpendicularly, or toward the center. if matter thus draws matter; it must be in proportion of its quantity. therefore the apple draws the earth, as well as the earth draws the apple.” > That there is a power like that we here call gravity which extends its self thro’ the universe & thus by degrees, he began to apply this property of gravitation to the motion of the earth, & of the heavenly bodys: to consider thir distances, their magnitudes, thir periodical revolutions: to find out, that this property, conjointly with a progressive motion impressed on them in the beginning, perfectly solv’d thir circular courses; kept the planets from falling upon one another, or dropping all together into one center. & thus he unfolded the Universe. this was the birth of those amazing discoverys, whereby he built philosophy on a solid foundation, to the astonishment of all Europe. By contrast here’s Voltaire’s [fullest version]([Internet History Sourcebooks: Modern History](https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1778voltaire-lettres.asp#Letter) XV) - which can’t have been heard by him from Newton directly: > [@](#): > > [A]s he was walking one day in his garden, and saw some fruits fall from a tree, he fell into a profound meditation on that gravity, the cause of which had so long been sought, but in vain, by all the philosophers, whilst the vulgar think there is nothing mysterious in it. He said to himself, that from what height soever in our hemisphere, those bodies might descend, their fall would certainly be in the progression discovered by Galileo; and the spaces they run through would be as the square of the times. Why may not this power which causes heavy bodies to descend, and is the same without any sensible diminution at the remotest distance from the centre of the earth, or on the summits of the highest mountains, why, said Sir Isaac, may not this power extend as high as the moon? And in case its influence reaches so far, is it not very probable that this power retains it in its orbit, and determines its motion? But in case the moon obeys this principle (whatever it be) may we not conclude very naturally that the rest of the planets are equally subject to it? In case this power exists (which besides is proved) it must increase in an inverse ratio of the squares of the distances. All, therefore, that remains is, to examine how far a heavy body, which should fall upon the earth from a moderate height, would go; and how far in the same time, a body which should fall from the orbit of the moon, would descend. To find this, nothing is wanted but the measure of the earth, and the distance of the moon from it. So while Stukeley doesn’t mention the moon specifically, for Voltaire the point is that gravity must extend as far as it. The latter’s also the point of John Conduitt’s less detailed version, even though he probably also heard the story directly from Newton. (There are a couple of other early versions, including an earlier mention by Voltaire, but they don’t elaborate.) ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-the-newton-apple-story/796256/13 "2017-09-13T21:29:48Z")
The thing is there’s nothing obvious about gravity being a universal force. People could see that things up in the sky like the moon, the sun, and the stars weren’t falling to the ground. So it was natural to assume that they were not subject to whatever force made things fall here on Earth. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2017, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-the-newton-apple-story/796256/14 "2017-09-13T23:25:43Z")
> [@Quercus](#): > > Which is a huge, huge, giant step forward in science-- even the planets follow understandable rules of physics, the same rules that apples and cricket balls follow, and humans can figure them out. Yes. This is a strong candidate for the most significant insight in all of human history. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2017, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-the-newton-apple-story/796256/15 "2017-09-14T01:50:06Z")
The key connection didn’t involve the Sun at all, but the Moon: The Earth attracts both the apple and the Moon, and in both cases, the Earth’s mass is the same. The acceleration of the Moon is less, but Newton (correctly) figured that that might be because the Moon is further away, and he noticed that, comparing the apple and the Moon, there was a simple law for how the acceleration might decrease with distance, that would account for both. And then he took that simple law and, after taking a little time off to invent calculus, showed that that simple law (together with his laws of motion) would lead to all of Kepler’s laws. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2017, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-the-newton-apple-story/796256/16 "2017-09-14T05:39:25Z")
Especially when friction was a part of everyday life, the concept of “a body in motion stays in motion” was a major breakthrough. Consider that in a world where wheel bearings and long smooth straightaways were pretty rare, people thought friction and rapidly slowing momentum was the natural order. IIRC Aristotle had to make up a special reason why something like an arrow could actually fly far and fast without the same obvious slowdown we see with something slid along the ground. (“the air rushing by the tail feathers helped send the arrow on its way, since they were bird feathers”) Newton’s breakthrough was to first deduce that momentum was the rule and friction the intruder. Then the next breakthrough - that whatever gravity was, it worked equally the same on the heavens and the earth and pulled apple and moon the same. With no explanation before that, people generally assumed there was one set of rules for heavenly bodies and a different set for near the ground. (Note though he had the proof, attributed to Galileo’ experiment, that gravity was a constant acceleration no matter what the weight… also counterintuitive to the world view with friction.) Newton’s final big breakthrough was to invent calculus and so prove that for any large sphere (he knew the earth and visible celestial bodies were relatively spherical) that ascribing a power of gravity to each piece of mass, the net attraction was the same as if there were a massive attraction from a pinpoint at the center of a sphere… i.e. gravity appeared pretty much the same despite the fact that some gravity was pulling on you from all 360 degrees of the compass, from the crust and the center of the earth. So, from watching an apple fall, he could eventually deduce that the same force must also attract the moon. (Fun fact - his calculations for the moon’s orbit were too good. He fudged the numbers apparently to get the correct result to validate his theory.) ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2017, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-the-newton-apple-story/796256/17 "2017-09-14T06:06:08Z")
Where do old pianos go long time passing Where do old pianos go long time ago Where do old pianos go Donated to charity When will somebody play And love the sounds they make – AHunter3, who owns a piano acquired for free via Freecycle, and [makes music on it sometimes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va0wTJnkXFE), even if not good enough that I should quit my day job etc. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2017, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-the-newton-apple-story/796256/18 "2017-09-14T06:18:50Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > Where do old pianos go psst… I think you posted to the wrong thread. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2017, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-the-newton-apple-story/796256/19 "2017-09-14T06:42:12Z")
What’s brown and if it fell out of a tree, would have killed Isaac Newton? A piano ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2017, 11:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-the-newton-apple-story/796256/20 "2017-09-14T11:26:37Z")
^^^ umm, wrong thread, sorry [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-the-newton-apple-story/796256.md?page=2)