| The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. 2002. |
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| Newton’s laws of motion |
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| The three laws that govern the motion of material objects. They were first written down by Isaac Newton in the seventeenth century and gave rise to a general view of nature known as the clockwork universe. The laws are: (1) Every object moves in a straight line unless acted upon by a force. (2) The acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the net force exerted and inversely proportional to the object’s mass. (3) For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. | 1 |
| ‡ Until the beginning of the twentieth century, these three laws, together with the laws of thermodynamics and Maxwell’s equations, were thought to explain the entire physical universe. | 2 |
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| | | The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. Edited by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. Copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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