The Science & Technology Group

Organising committee:  Tanya Dempster, Paul McKay, Bill Devitt, Kurt and Lynda Kovach - science@ashbyu3a.co.uk -

This group is for both people who have a general interest in science as well as those whose careers have been in this area. We meet monthly with talks given mainly by members on a mixture of science/ engineering topics, some science news, information about famous scientists, good YouTube ideas and even the occasional practical activity.

We normally meet in the main hall at Packington Village Hall, High Street, Packington LE65 1WJ on the 2nd Tuesday of the month at 2pm.
Parking is limited, so please try to car-share if possible.

Tuesday 10th March.

'Sir Isaac Newton' A talk by Paul McKay

This talk highlighted the enormous contribution made by Sir Isaac Newton in physics and mathematics during the ‘Age of Reason’, during the 16th to 18th Centuries. Up to this time Ancient Greek philosophers, like Aristotle and Ptolemy, had defined the natural world, shaped only by what they observed with the naked eye and the legacy of theological teachings. Accordingly, Earth was centre of the Solar System and indeed the Universe, and all matter was made from Earth, Water, Fire and Air. Gradually, philosophers like Copernicus, Descartes, Galileo and Newton started to observe record and think more deeply about the physical causes of what they were seeing and then tested their understanding by predicting future events, with spectacular success.

Born in 1642 at Woolsthorpe Manor, Isaac Newton was a sickly baby whose father had died 3 months earlier. His mother re-married and moved away, not wanted by his new step-father, and was brought up by his grandmother. This unsettling time deeply traumatised young Isaac and seemed to shape his adult life.

Isaac’s mother soon recognised that her son was no farmer and he spent his youth being encouraged in his practical and scientific pursuits by the apothecary, his uncle and his school master in Grantham. With their support, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1661 aged 19 years. Here he started thinking about geometry and light, and although clearly talented, he did not mix with his peers. His future was now split between academic life at Cambridge, time at Woolsthorpe Manor to escape the bubonic plague sweeping the nation and public life in London.

Isaac’s mind was most productive at Woolsthorpe, where he was alone to experiment with light and prisms and thought deeply about the nature of gravity. The problem of colour fringes spoiling the image in a Galilean refracting telescope he solved by a radical change from a lens to a parabolic mirror, a shape that brought all the coloured constituents of white light to a common focus. On return to Cambridge his reputation and talent grew and he became a professor of mathematics and member of the Royal Society, where he rubbed shoulders with established luminaries of the time, scientists Robert Hooke, Edmund Halley, Robert Boyle and diarist Samuel Pepys. At a meeting with Halley to discuss the appearance of a bright comet and its orbit, Isaac said he knew that the orbit would be an ellipse due to the influence of gravity under the inverse square law. This incidental remark led to Isaac embarking on his greatest work, the Principia Mathematica which would become the basis of modern for mechanics. This treatise embodied his laws of motion that ruled objects on Earth as well as in the heavens, and it caused a sensation. Isaac became President of the Royal Society and a he was knighted by Queen Anne.

Fame and prominence in public life did not suit Isaac Newton. He found criticism difficult to handle and his reluctance to publish his work caused problems. He argued with Hooke over who first discovered the inverse square law, with John Flamsteed (the first Astronomer Royal), over orbital data for the Moon and with a German mathematician, Leibniz over who invented calculus. He also risked ruin by refusing to be ordained into the Anglican Church, as required for professors at Trinity College.

His appointment to Warden and then Master of the Mint was less troublesome, but his single-minded enthusiasm for the work was the same. Britain’s coinage was crude and open to easy counterfeiting and theft. He introduced milling of the edges of coins to prevent them being clipped, accurate weights and measures and severe penalties for those who stole from the treasury.

Isaac Newton was a genius, but he had many failings. He spent a large part of his life on researching alchemy to find the elusive trick of turning base metals to gold and when he unwisely invested heavily in the South Sea Company, he lost heavily. His lasting legacy was complete revision of the laws of physics, with a monument to mark the event of his burial in Westminster Abbey in 1727.

It is intended to arrange a visit to Woolsthorpe Manor and visitors centre in September 2026 for u3a members. Details are yet to be confirmed.

Our next meeting will be a talk by on Tuesday 14th April by Kate Barnes, a lecturer at the University of Derby, on Forensic Entomology, the study of insects in legal investigations to determine the time of death of a person. Come along to learn more about this fascinating science.

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