Himachal researcher's work on Newton's law gets appreciation

A researcher from Himachal Pradesh has received appreciations from an international society of scientists for picking holes in Newton's law of motion.

"The historical narrative provided by you has raised some important issues," Robert E. Bradley, president of the Washington-based Euler Society, said in a letter this week to Ajay Sharma, assistant director (education) with the state government.

He asked 50-year-old Sharma to continue future research on the development of the formula Fma, the second law of motion.

"There were no second derivative and acceleration at time of Newton. So he could have not discovered mathematical form of second law of motion," said Bradley of Adelphi University.

During a conference organised by the Euler Society in Austin in Texas July 21-24, Sharma claimed that Newton did not discover the second law of motion.

The second law of motion is an equation which relates mass and acceleration.

The scientists agreed with Sharma's research and to support him the Euler Society issued a signed statement July 22, saying "the society offers its support to his work and appreciates his efforts in this area".

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

"It is clear from the critical study of Newton's 'Principia', Book I, dated May 8, 1686. Nobody knows who has given Fma," says the book, priced $80 or Rs.5,200.

"The school level textbooks of 220 countries need to be re-structured, as coming generations have right to know the truth about law of motion," Sharma told IANS.

The book says: Consider a boy is standing at distance of 10 metres from the wall. The boy holds a rubber ball and cloth ball in his hands.

Firstly, the boy throws rubber ball with force 2N (Newton) on the wall. The rubber ball after striking the wall rebounds to 10 metres. Thus, action and reaction are equal in this case.

Secondly, the boy throws cloth ball with an equal 2N force on the wall. The cloth ball rebounds to five metres. Thus action and reaction are not equal.

"Thus to every action there is opposite reaction but it may or may not be equal to action," says the 10th chapter of Sharma's book.

"The book was reviewed by experts of the Cambridge University for more than seven months before it sent for printing," said Sharma, who is working on the basic laws for the past 31 years.