Indian Author Claims Newton Didn’t Give Second Law of Motion

Ajay Sharma, an assistant director for education with the Himachal Pradesh government, and a researcher for Newton’s work has claimed that it was actually Leonhard Eule, who gave the second law of motion F=ma in 1975.

Sharma debated that in Isaac Newton’s time, the terms “acceleration” and “second derivative” did not exist, so he could not have deduced F=ma, the second law of motion. This has been unscientifically credited to Newton, says a research paper written by Sharma called “Isaac Newton, Leonhard Euler and F=ma”.

“Newton gave a velocity dependent force and Euler an acceleration dependent force. If the magnitudes of equations of force F=ma and F=2ma are equal, then it implies 1=2, which is not true,” said the paper published this month in international journal “Physics Essays”.

“Newton did not discover F=ma in any edition of the ‘Principia’. In Newton’s time, acceleration and second derivatives were not given. So it was impossible for Newton to write F=ma,” Sharma told IANS.

Sharma, has already got wide recognition for his research on Newton’s law of motion got accolades from Washington-based Euler Society in July this year.

“There were no second derivative and acceleration at the time of Newton. So he could have not discovered the mathematical form of the second law of motion,” Robert E. Bradley, president of the Euler Society, said in a letter to 50-year-old Sharma.

Sharma’s 340-page book “Beyond Newton and Archimedes” tries to prove that Newton did not discover the second law of motion.