Laws of Motion
The term laws of motion generally refers to three statements originally devised by English physicist Isaac Newton (1642–1727) in the 1680s. These laws, along with Newton's law of gravitation, are generally considered to be the ultimate solution to a problem that had troubled scholars for more than 2,000 years: motion.
History
Examples of motion are everywhere in the world around us. What makes a rock fall off a cliff? How does a skate slide across an icy surface? What keeps the planets in their orbits around the Sun? It is only natural, then, that questions about motion were foremost in the minds of ancient philosophers and physicists.
Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 B.C.), for example, tried to find the causes of motion. He...
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