Applejack visits Woolsthorpe Manor (Home of Sir Isaac Newton) · 9:03pm Jul 26th, 2014
Applejack vector by Flawless Tea
I led Applejack along the track leading to the Lincolnshire farmhouse. We walked past the National Trust information boards, through a gate into the small orchard to one side of the building and approached the famous tree.
“So," I said, "what do you think?”
Applejack walked around it with a sceptical frown and sniffed at one of the fruit.
“Flower of Kent,” she said. “Good cookers and should do well in this soil.” She took a step back and surveyed the entire tree. “I've seen better specimens. It'll keep fruitin' given plenty of TLC, but in the long term, ye'd do better to pull it out and plant a new sapling with a better rootstock.”
“It has enormous heritage value,” I explained. “This is the tree which dropped the apple which inspired Isaac Newton in developing his theory of gravity in the seventeenth century.”
“Ye tellin' me this here tree is that old?”
“Well, the original tree blew down in a storm,” I said. “But it's believed this one then took root from a branch of that one.”
“So some three hundred years ago, that professor was sittin' under this tree—or its predecessor—ponderin' how the universe works. Then an apple drops on his head, and—eureka!—he says—that's how it works—apples always fall down.”
She did not sound overly impressed by this intellectual achievement.
“Well,” I said, “the bit about it falling on his head is almost certainly an embellishment. All we know is he said his thoughts were aroused by a the fall of an apple. But even if it is just a story, it's a story which fits very well. At the time he was thinking about the motion of the sun and the moon and planets. Johannes Kepler had published a series of laws about planetary motion, showing how they move around the sun on elliptical orbits. There was much discussion about this among the scientists of the day at the Royal Society in London. Newton was trying to understand this pattern. He could tell there was some sort of force at work, but what could it be? Then he saw an apple fall to the ground, and that brought his philosophical thoughts down to earth. He realised that the same force which causes the objects we see to fall downwards could also explain the movement of the moon. He then worked out the mathematics to explain it, and published it in his famous Principia.”
“So why don't the moon fall to earth like an apple?”
“Because it's always moving in a curve around the earth. If the earth wasn't there, the moon would keep moving in a straight line. But the gravitational attraction of our planet bends its path around, so it moves in an approximate circle. If it were to slow down, it would spiral downwards and eventually hit the earth. But it's in a stable orbit, moving at constant speed which takes it around the earth once a month.”
“Is that how Princess Luna does it?”
“Well, I don't know how it works in Equestria, with magic and everything. It kinda looks as if your world follows a geocentric model, where Celestia and Luna move the sun and moon around the earth... Which suggests they both orbit with a period of 24 hours... So maybe your sun and moon are much smaller than ours... Or is Equestria like this world, but the princesses just tweak the orbits of astronomical bodies as necessary?... Or is the motion of the sun and moon determined by different forces?.. Or... Ow!”
My thoughts were interrupted by an apple hitting the top of my head. I looked at Applejack and realised she had just gently bucked the trunk of the tree.
“You did that on purpose,” I said.
“Eeyup. I felt your philosophising needed to be brought back down to earth.”
“Why?” I said, rubbing my head.
“Magic doesn't work like physics,” she said. “It's not about underlying rules. Instead it's about getting the job done efficiently, and with a certain amount of style. So when I buck a tree, my earth pony magic will ensure the apples fall just where I need them to be. Usually in the buckets laid out to catch them, but in this particular case, on your head. Same with Celestia—she uses her alicorn magic to lift the sun above the horizon, 'cause that's where she needs it to be in the morning.”
“Okay...” I said. Did Isaac Newton have to go through this sort of debate on the role of divine forces in celestial motion? Quite likely—given the amount he wrote on theology, in addition to physics. With hindsight his theory of gravity seemed so simple and elegant, but no doubt at the time, it was a challenge to see the wood for the apple trees.
“Shall we go for lunch?”
Heh. I can see why you don't write much Applejack. Not because you can't (I especially loved the one-sniff analysis of the tree's cultivar and health,) but because she's not exactly the best pony for most of your oeuvre. Very interesting take on magic, though. Expression of intent through exertion of will. I like it.
¡Another ScienceBlog! I quote FlutterShy:
For what it is worth, mine own headcanon, with nothing backing it, so take it with a big grain of halite, is that Discord is Q:
He created the universe of MLP:FIM out of boredom. It has only the world of Equus in it. The Sky, Sun, and moon are illusory.
If left to their own devices, the motions of the Sun and Moon are chaotic. The weather and climate are chaotic. The Alicorns discovered that they can control the Sun and Moon. Pegasi discovered that they can control the weather and climate. Without the intervention of ponies, Equus would be much less habitable. Most magical creatures learned ways of controlling the climate and weather of their realms.
Since the 2 Royal PonySisters control the Sun and Moon, they might as well make the year a convenient length. I imagine that the year is 420 days long because that is the least common multiple of all natural numbers 7 and less. It has 24 factors:
420
210
140
105
84
70
60
42
35
30
28
21
20
15
14
12
10
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
If one wants to do something 5 times annually, it will happen every 84 days. If one does something every 7 days, one does it 60 times an year.
2318443
I like Applejack very much, but she's so stubborn it's difficult to bring her into my stories. Pinkie Pie, however, will do whatever I want.
2318633
I was considering a calendar in which Starswirl designed the year with 360 days (lots of factors), but then five days were added to accommodate more public holidays; with an extra day every four years to hold the Pan-Equestrian Show Jumping Competition (so called leap years).
2319623
360 also has 24 factors, but 7 is not 1 of them. This gets me thinking:
If we want to maximize prime factors in a minimal way, have the yearlength be close to a Julian Year (365.25 tropical EarthDays) for agriculture (growing seasons can oly be extended or compressed so much), and have a rational ratio of Equestrian Days to EarthDays for those who travel between Earth and Equus, 210 days in an year with a daylength of 36 EarthHours is good:
210 is the product of the 1st 4 primes (2, 3, 5, and 7). A Julian Year has 8,766 hours. a 210-Day, Equestrian Year with 36 hour days has 7,560 hours which is shorter, but with the help of EarthPonyMagic, the crops can still grow in the slightly shorter season (86% as long as a Julian Year)
Every 3 EarthDays would equal 2 Equestrian days. In Equestria, one could work a full day, burn the MidNightOil on one’s projects, sleep 10 hours, and wake naturally, without an alarmclock, before sunrise.
The Equestrians can divide their days into 60 hour (60 is the least common multiple of all natural numbers 6 and less), and every hour into 60 minutes, and every minute into 60 seconds.
Despite being the product of only primes, 210 still has 16 divisors:
1
2
3
5
6
7
10
14
15
21
30
35
42
70
105
210
¡210 still has 16 ways to evenly divide the year!
2319623
Yeah, my guess is that it's harder to write stories about AJ because she's the Bearer of Honesty. Fiction is a form of lying, after all, even when they're educational lies.
Y'know, if this were about 150 words longer, you could publish it and I could favorite it.
Or, if it's one in a series, have you given thought to collecting them in a story that's a series of loosely connected short anecdotes?
2323387
You're quite right. I don't really think of these posts as full stories - just random thoughts - but some of them do grow into something more. If they go much above 1000 words then I submit them as stories (Domestic Rock Science and The Tao of Two Pie), but then I get paranoid about quality control and spend an excessive amount of time proof-reading.
Collecting them into a series is a good idea - I'll think about that.