isaac newton was a genius. you know, there are people on this campus that can calculate how fast the cannonball would have to go. and you know what? there are people in this room who could calculate with no pencil, no paper, only their minds how fast the cannonball would have to go. and i think that 80% of the people in this room can make that calculation if i guide your thinking. can we try it? you want to see who you are? let's try. let me give you a geometrical fact. we live in a world that's curved. we know it's curved because if you put a laser one meter off the ground and you fired the laser beam out over the desert like the mojave desert in california, perfectly flat for miles and miles and miles. if you fired that laser beam, you'd find out the laser beam over here, it looks like to people it's pointing up. but it's not pointing up here. it's just that the earth is curving under. let me give you a fact that a geography teacher can tell you about. if you go out 8 kilometers, that's 8,000 meters this way,

isaac newton did. so isaac newton was a genius. he pulled it together. and guess what i'm expecting of you folks: to understand what newton left, it's a legacy. so you're just born at this time and someone tells you, hit, boom, you got it. see that? works out. i'll tell you what i didn't understand there. well, i grew up in massachusetts. massachusetts has its own coney island, riviera beach. and i grew up near riviera beach. riviera beach had a roller coaster. you guys know what a roller coaster is? roller coaster, drags you up with a chain up the top of this big hill and then lets you go. and the roller coaster set all these cars and all these cars would come down like this and a guy would be standing there, pull back on a stick like that. that stick he pulls back on, between the rails is a board that comes up. and those cars come down-- [screech] friction, huh? and friction will stop the cars. people get out, other people get on. he takes his big lever and he go, skkrcch! when he goes like that, you know what happens? the board drops. and now with som

isaac newton. you know what? a lot of people think that isaac newton discovered gravity. he didn't, the cavemen knew about gravity. the cave women knew about gravity. what newton discovered was what? check your neighbor and see if your neighbor be knowing. in other words, did you get a chance to look through the chapter? what did newton discover about gravity? newton discovered that gravity is what, gang? universal, universal, you're right. universal, that gravity extends everywhere. and what this equation tells us? the equation of gravity just tells us that there's an attractive force, 'f' between all things and for any two things that attractive force depends upon, is proportional to, is related to the product of the masses of the two things. this might be a planet, one. this might be another planet, two. those two planets are tugging on each other with the force that depends very much on how much mass they have, but it also peters out with distance square. as the distance between those planets or those chunks of matter or those particles, as the distance between increas

isaac newton came along right after galileo. and newton's first law says, "hey, gang, if there's no force acting on something, it will stay as it is." we call that the law of inertia. if something's at rest, don't mess with it, it'll stay at rest. if something's moving, don't mess with it, it'll keep right on moving. in what kind of path? - straight. - a straight line path. to say it will move in a straight line path at steady speed is to say it will move with constant-- begin with the v, check your neighbor. try again. what is it? all together. a booming resounding of all the scholars of hawaii, all together, what's the word? begins with a v. - velocity. - all right, all right. i thought you were gonna be wimps there for a while. velocity. see. constant velocity says constant speed and constant direction too. ain't that true? so something will move at constant velocity in the absence of a force. that's if it's moving anyway, but if it happen to be at rest. no force? what's it gonna do? stay at rest. so we called that idea the la

isaac newton is the one that figured that out. let's suppose we have a ball of putty or a ball of taffy or a ball of jell-o, something that's really pliable, something that you can whang around a lot, okay? and let's suppose i pull it across the room, and i pull it everywhere with just the same amount of force. what it would do is it'll race across the room and when it got here if you took a snapshot of it, it would still be in a ball shape, okay? let's suppose instead that i pulled on that jell-o a lot stronger here on this part and so-so in the middle and over here a little bit weak-- quite a bit weaker. ah, now i have a difference in pulls across the jell-o. that jell-o, gang, is gonna race across the room. when it gets over here and you take a snapshot of it as it goes by, would it have that shape? no it wouldn't have that shape because this side here is accelerating more than this side. it's a pliable stuff now, so this side here would, maybe, get out to here. this side here is not being pulled so far, that would lag behind o

isaac newton came along right after galileo. and newton's first law says, "hey, gang, if there's no force acting on something, it will stay as it is." we call that the law of inertia. if something's at rest, don't mess with it, it'll stay at rest. if something's moving, don't mess with it, it'll keep right on moving. in what kind of path? - straight. - a straight line path. to say it will move in a straight line path at steady speed is to say it will move with constant-- begin with the v, check your neighbor. try again. what is it? all together. a booming resounding of all the scholars of hawaii, all together, what's the word? begins with a v. - velocity. - all right, all right. i thought you were gonna be wimps there for a while. velocity. see. constant velocity says constant speed and constant direction too. ain't that true? so something will move at constant velocity in the absence of a force. that's if it's moving anyway, but if it happen to be at rest. no force? what's it gonna do? stay at rest. so we called that idea the la