CoursesCourse 4
Newton’s clockwork universe
Galileo rolled balls down ramps; Newton showed that one law moves apples and planets alike. This course follows how experiment, mathematics, and imagination built the clockwork universe, powered two industrial revolutions, and still left something out.
Start lesson 1Lessons
- 1 Standing on the shoulders of giantsGalileo’s ramps showed that heavy and light things fall together, and that motion needs no push to keep going. Einstein called it the real beginning of physics.
- 2 One law for heaven and earthNewton explained Kepler’s ellipses with a single force, and the law that drops an apple turned out to hold the Moon in its orbit.
- 3 Invisible forcesFrom momentum and energy to electric charge and fields, physics learned to reason about things nobody can see or touch.
- 4 The clockwork universeNewton’s physics powered two industrial revolutions and a picture of the world as a machine. Then chaos and the question of free choice exposed its limits.
You’ll be able to
- Explain how Galileo’s ramp experiments overturned Aristotle’s ideas about falling and motion, and what it means to reason toward a limiting case.
- State Newton’s three laws, and explain how universal gravitation united the physics of heaven and earth.
- Trace how physics moved beyond pushes and pulls to momentum, energy, and fields, from gravity to electricity and light.
- Describe the mechanical worldview, from Laplace’s demon to reductionism, and the problems of chaos and free choice it leaves open.
About this course
This course, 牛顿机械论 (Newtonian Mechanism), is the second of four courses on physics. It continues from Course 3, The cosmos before Newton.
The course’s argument and examples lead. We add background for readers outside China, the views of historians where they differ, and hands-on activities. We say clearly which ideas are interpretations and which are settled history.