Isaac Newton’s inspiration for his law of universal gravitation came from an apple falling on his head. In 2010, a piece of the tree and an image of Newton were taken into orbit. The original tree still stands and produces apples.
Most of us heard the story in elementary school: A young Isaac Newton is sitting under an apple tree, contemplating the mysteries of the universe, when an apple falls from the tree and hits the young scientist on the head. That simple event, which has been embellished somewhat over the centuries, is thought to have provided the inspiration for Newton’s law of universal gravitation. The importance of that event to scientific history was recognized in 2010 when British-born astronaut Dr. Piers Sellers carried a 4cm-long piece of that original shaft and an image of Newton into orbit in the shuttle space Atlantis.
A famous tree, still going strong:
Although Newton did not specify the tree under which he sat in the summer of 1666, there was only one apple tree at Woolsthorpe Manor near Grantham in Lincolnshire, the site of the event.
The apple tree collapsed in a storm in 1816, but a major portion was rerooted and the tree survived.
Isaac Newton’s apple tree, now over 350 years old, is in its third set of roots. It still provides a good crop of apples every summer.
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