Q 01/05

What closed Cambridge University in 1665, sending Isaac Newton home for two famously productive years?

A) The Great Fire

B) A civil war

C) The Great Plague

D) A royal decree

Answer · why

C) The Great Plague

The Great Plague shut the university, and in less than two years at home Newton began the work on calculus, light and gravity that made his name.

Q 02/05

A costly book on what stopped the Royal Society funding Newton's Principia?

A) Birds

B) Fish

C) Insects

D) Shells

Answer · why

B) Fish

Fish: the heavily illustrated De Historia Piscium sold so poorly that the Society could not pay for Newton's book, and it later settled one official's...

Q 03/05

Newton's first law says a body's natural behaviour is to move how?

A) In a straight line at constant speed

B) In a circle at constant speed

C) Toward the nearest large mass

D) Slowing gradually to rest

Answer · why

A) In a straight line at constant speed

In a straight line at constant speed: on a perfectly frictionless surface a sliding puck would simply never stop. Friction and air drag are what halt ...

Q 04/05

According to Newton's first law, what is needed to change a body's state of rest or uniform motion?

A) A surrounding medium

B) A force impressed upon it

C) A change of mass

D) The passage of time

Answer · why

B) A force impressed upon it

A force impressed upon it, in Newton's own words; and a change of direction counts, so a car rounding a bend at steady speed is being forced the whole...

Q 05/05

When do bathroom scales in an elevator read more than your usual weight?

A) As it starts upward

B) At steady speed upward

C) As it starts downward

D) While it is stopped

Answer · why

A) As it starts upward

As it starts upward: by Newton's second law the floor must push up harder than gravity pulls down to get you moving, and the scales read that push. At...