How did Newton come up with is Universal Gravitational Law?
Before we begin, here is a picture of Isaac Newton himself: In 1666, Isaac Newton was living at home in England because schools were closed due to the black plague – so when you are sitting in class bored out of your mind wondering who in the world thought up these seemingly meaningless equations, thinking that the reason was solely based upon making your life miserable, be thankful you are in school because Newton thought this stuff up while school was closed! Imagine what he would have come up with if school were open…oh jeez… It had already been shown that if the path of a planet were an ellipse, then the magnitude of force F on the planet resulting from the sun must vary inversely with the square of the distance between the center of the planet and the center of the sun (in agreement with Kepler’s first law of planetary motion: (1)paths of planets are ellipses, with the sun at one focus; (2)an imaginary line from sun to a planet streams out equal areas in equal time intervals, so p
