At 8:57 +1100 02/11/19, Pat Naughtin wrote:
As a side issue, you might like to compare this last average with the apple that is supposed to have fallen on Sir Isaac Newton's head in his garden at Woolsthorpe. Presumably Newton's apple had a weight of one newton, and we can safely assume that the acceleration due to gravity was about the same as now (say 9.8 m/s^2). Using the formula F = ma, it follows that the mass of Newton's apple was m = F/m = 1 � 9.8 = 102 grams. It follows that Isaac Newton's original apple (allowing certain assumptions) was quite small.
Indeed we were quite lucky: imangine that the famous apple was huge, say 500 g, Isaac Newton could well have been knocked out...
Louis
