Isaac Newton and Physics for Kids: His Life and Ideas with 21 Activities

146 Pages·2009·3.55 MB·English

by  Kerrie Logan Hollihan

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hollihan, Kerrie Logan.
Isaac Newton and physics for kids : his life and ideas with 21 activities / Kerrie Logan
Hollihan.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-55652-778-4
1. Newton, Isaac, Sir, 1642-1727—Juvenile literature. 2. Physicists—Great Britain—
Biography—Juvenile literature. 3. Physics—Experiments—Juvenile literature.
I. Title.
QC16.N7H586 2009
530.092—dc22
2008048635
Cover and interior design: Monica Baziuk
Interior illustrations: Laura D’Argo
Cover images: Isaac Newton: Corbis • apple, prism, Comet Hyakutake,
and Newton’s cradle: Shutterstock • Tower of London: Library of Congress
Isaac Newton commemorative stamps courtesy of Royal Mail.
© 2009 by Kerrie Logan Hollihan
All rights reserved
First edition
Published by Chicago Review Press, Incorporated
814 North Franklin Street
Chicago, Illinois 60610
ISBN 978-1-55652-724-1
Printed in the United States of America
5  4  3  2  1

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C o N T E N T S
Dz
TIME LINE VI
PREFACE: THE BRILLIANT AND BIZARRE ISAAC NEWTON IX
1.

A Boy LIKE No oTHER 1
Make a Waste Book 5
Build a Waterwheel 8
Make Your Own Ink, and Write with It 10
2.

STUDy AT CAMBRIDGE 17
Phases of the Moon 21
Watch a Pendulum Swing 26
3.

NEwToN THE MISFIT 29
Water Clock or Candle Clock? 32
Create Optical Illusions 34
Locate Your Latitude 36
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4. 8.

ASKING QUESTIoNS 39 LooKING FoR CHANGE 93
Make a Plague Mask 46 Power to the Parabola 95
What Are the Odds? 99
5.
A Straight Shot at Playing Around with Forces 100
THE LIGHT SHINES
9.

oN ISAAC NEwToN 49
A MAN oF
Make a Prism 53 LoNDoN TowN 103
Newton’s Rings 60
Shine Your Light on the Inverse Square Law 62 Bake an Apple Pye in a Coffin 111
Create Clues in a Portrait 112
6.

10.
THE SECRET yEARS 65
THE LIoN’S RoAR
Translate an Alchemist’s Poem 69 FADES AwAy 115
A Crystal Garden 72
7.
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SCIENCE’S MoST
IMPoRTANT BooK 79 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 123
RESOURCES 125
Newton’s First Law 83
Newton’s Second Law 84 INDEX 128
Newton’s Third Law 85
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P R E F A C E
T H E B R I L L I A N T
A N D B I z A R R E
I S A AC N E w T o N
Dz
Isaac Newton hated to count sheep: every day, every week, over and over again.
In his tiny village of woolsthorpe, England, in the 1650s, losing your sheep meant
losing your way of making a living.
But Isaac didn’t care. Raising sheep was boring. He’d rather read one of the books
lining the shelves in the house where he lived with his mother and grandparents. He
knew he was different. He didn’t feel like the other boys who were growing up to be-
come farmers in woolsthorpe. Isaac Newton saw things in a unique way.
Isaac saw patterns. He saw the rhythm of everyday life, sunrise to sunset, spring
to summer to autumn to winter. He saw patterns as the sun, moon, and stars steadily
marched overhead. He couldn’t touch anything “up there,” but still he wondered wheth-
er heavenly bodies moved according to the same rules that worked “down here.”
Isaac built tiny windmills, water clocks, sundials, and kites, and saw patterns in how
wind, water, and the sun made them work. Through his own eyes and the touch of his
ingers, the boy sensed that the universe, both Earth and sky, were one and the same. CC
Isaac Newton’s story inspired England’s William
Isaac started to suspect that a universal “something” makes things go.
Wordsworth, whose poem “The Boy of Winander”
when Isaac Newton was a boy, people were just starting to give up the idea that
in turn inspired this dreamlike painting of a boy
the sun, moon, and stars revolved around the earth. At school during the week and in lost in thought. Library of Congress LC-USZ62-93933
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