d and mastered Oughtred's Clavis, and Descartes' Geometry, which led him to take up mathematics rather than chemistry as a serious study.As a result of the Plague, from 1665 threw 1666 Newton had spent a great deal of time at home. During this time it seems evident that a great deal of his best work was accomplished. He thought out the fundamental principles of his theory of gravitation. He determined that every particle of matter attracts every other particle. Yet he suspected that the attraction varied depending on the product of their masses. He suspected that the force, which retained the moon in its orbit around the earth, was the same as the terrestrial gravity. And to prove this hypothesis he proceeded by doing this. He knew that if a stone wall were allowed to fall near the surface of the earth, the attraction of the earth caused the stone wall to move though sixteen feet in one second. The moon's orbit relative to the earth is nearly a circle, and as a rough approximation assuming so, he knew the distance of the moon, and therefore the length of its path. He also knew the time it took the moon to go around the earth once, a month. The following diagram is a copy of his experiment.Therefore Newton could find its veloisty at any point such as M. Then he could find the distance MT through which it would move in the next second if it were not pulled by the earth's attraction. At the end of the second it was at M', and therefore the earth E must have pulled it through the distance TM' in one second. This experiment concluded that his estimate of the distance of the moon was inaccurate. Newton determined his calculation TM' was approximately one-eight less than he thought it would have been in his hypothesis. In October of 1669, Newton was chosen as a professor in replace of resigned Professor Barrow's. Newton chose Optics for the subject of his first research topic. Newton discovered the decomposition of white light...
