From the calendar, JZ and I went shopping at WalMart. It says here we had a "lengthy discussion" about formulas. He doesn't care for them, particularly fractions, where I don't care for operations where what is happening is not obvious. That means he thinks formulas should not have fractions, where I think they should not contain any mysterious symbols like the differential sign.
But I take exception to that old wive's tale that Newton developed the law of gravitation from watching an apple fall. Things don't happen like that. I've never read Principia, but I've leafed through it. Newton isn't full of cute anecdotes. I believe he made up the apple story so people would go away.
For clarity, I flipped through a later version translated to English, not Newton's original in Latin, a language I do not understand. Newton diagrammed his work quite accurately. And there is no diagram of an apple.
[Author's note 2017: these short entries are based on my desk calendar, so were not written to be blogged. They were also written throughout the day as reminders. I'm no better at remembering those years later than the next guy.]
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