-5

An Indian "scientist" who is called Ajay Sharma, allegedly found proof that Newton's Third Law of motion isn't applicable to every situation, and therefore it's declared false, or at least it's in a need of reconstruction. The author alleges that the law fails to account for bodies of different shapes and sizes. He also conducts various experiments, that supposedly collaborate his points.

His paper explaining his reasoning in detail can be read here

Moreover, the author argues in another paper that there are discrepancies in variation of mass with velocity formulas.

What are the errors made by the author, given that the premise is false?

TheCuriousLayman
  • 13
  • 2
  • 1
    A search for for "ajay sharma newton" in [*New Scientist*](https://www.newscientist.com/) reveals nothing, nor in [*Scientific American*](https://www.scientificamerican.com/). Access to Academia.edu needs an account. Ajay Sharma, a politician, is seeking a research grant. The [*India Times*](https://www.indiatimes.com/trending/social-relevance/shimla-researcher-ajay-sharma-seeks-fund-to-fix-newtons-third-law-of-motion-528108.html) carries the story, which states "His research has been theoretically confirmed by the scientific community globally" but there is no justifaction given for that. – Weather Vane Jul 02 '22 at 21:15
  • 1
    ...beyond *In a communication to Sharma by American Association of Physics Teachers President, Gordon P. Ramsey, in 2018, "The (your) first paper on Newton's third law of motion outlined the possibility that experiments are needed for final confirmation up to which extent the shape and characteristics of bodies may affect the third law of motion."* – Weather Vane Jul 02 '22 at 21:42
  • Interestingly the India Times story describes a previous book as being published by "Cambridge International Science Publishers", which name results in very few hits other than this story and a scattering of references that either look dodgy or possible mistakes. – Tom Goodfellow Jul 02 '22 at 21:43
  • [Cambridge International Science Publishing](https://www.publishersglobal.com/directory/publisher-profile/12466) appears to be run from a residential address in a Cambridgeshire village. Clicking on [Go to the website](https://www.publishersglobal.com/outbound/66991291c13968ace61901d4c3c4ea06a7704d76) redirects to an article entitled "How To Hit The Word Count For Your Academic Writing". Following up other searches for "Cambridge International Science Publish***ers***" leads to the same place. – Weather Vane Jul 02 '22 at 21:57
  • 5
    He certainly hits the word count: after grandly castigating Newton for not using proper units or citing experimental results it's time to embark on "refutations" based on material properties which are backed up by "There are many experiments justify this deduction." but fail to cite any. And compelling logic abounds: "The familiar examples of Third Law of Motion is walking and swimming, person also moves possessing kinetic energy. But a person can walk neither only on rough surface not on ice. Further a person can only swim in water tank, ..." – Tom Goodfellow Jul 02 '22 at 22:05
  • "...if it has optimum depth (say 1.5 m); it indicates that characteristics of medium are important." BOOM! take that Isaac! it only looks as if I'm swimming, but my feet are actually on the bottom!" – Tom Goodfellow Jul 02 '22 at 22:05
  • 6
    How can it be disproven? You need to provide a summary of the claims as people shouldn't need to read multiple papers to understand the question – Joe W Jul 02 '22 at 22:14
  • 3
    No doi, not a proper science paper. I do not think this counts as a notable claim. – User65535 Jul 02 '22 at 22:38
  • 2
    "*The author alleges that the law fails to account for bodies of different shapes and sizes.*" Exactly. That was the main feature of Newton's laws, that motion, gravitation, etc. could all be explained using the same mathematical relationships regardless of size or shape, and as a result every object could be considered as a single point in space; only its mass, velocity, and position were relevant. Will his next paper be about how Einstein mistakenly forgot to account for the fact that time is uniform and constant everywhere? – Ray Butterworth Jul 03 '22 at 00:58
  • 3
    @User65535: Most of our notable claims don't have DOIs, but this one does: DOI: 10.17485/ijst/2017/v10i34/115866 – Oddthinking Jul 03 '22 at 09:33
  • 1
    @TheCuriousLayman: We are going to have trouble answering this question within the rules of the site, because the claimant makes some silly statements (no equations means it isn't scientific? No units given means it isn't scientific?) and seems to assume that Newton was the last word in mechanics. (e.g. even if Newton only gave 3 examples, doesn't mean there were only three.) But to answer this we need references... We need to find some serious physicist who has given this crackpot some thought. – Oddthinking Jul 03 '22 at 09:44
  • @Oddthinking: you could migrate this to physics SE, where answers from textbook principles are allowed. I would also suggest at least splitting/deleting the penultimate para (and in particular the reflection thereof in the Q title) because it seems to be about different claims (Einstein rather than Newton being challenged there.) – Fizz Jul 03 '22 at 17:03
  • @Oddthinking: regarding the DOI, yeah, but the "Indian Journal of Science and Technology" is a trash journal even by NAAS standards. see entry 1294 in their list. http://naas.org.in/NJS/journals2022.pdf – Fizz Jul 03 '22 at 17:17

1 Answers1

13

He makes the claim that Newton's Third Law is only true in the limited case of elastic collisions, giving as counter examples inelastic collisions (ball of chewing gum deforms and sticks to wall) and destructive collisions (heavy ball tears through sheet of paper). In this he seems to be focused on kinetic energy and overlooks what Newton actually claimed:

To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction; or, the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts

So what happens to the kinetic energy is not considered - it may be converted into potential energy (spring compression in rubber ball, converting back to kinetic energy through the subsequent opposed forces as the ball rebounds) or simply to heat as bonds shift in the chewing gum. And it only concerns the mutual actions: to the extent that the sheet of paper impeded the motion of the ball it exerted a reactive force upon it.

He also oddly cites super-elastic collisions as a counter-example, e.g. ball hits a sheet of explosive and flies freakishly high, while overlooking that Newton is describing the physics of motion of a pair of colliding bodies: adding external forces (be they chemical, electromagnetic, or whatever) just means that you're not analyzing a Newtonian interaction.

The paper also shows some lack of editing, such as numbered paragraphs out of order (page 15 + 16) and repeated sentences, which although far from fatal flaws in themselves, suggest a lack of review.

Tom Goodfellow
  • 898
  • 6
  • 15
  • 4
    You may be completely correct, but why should we trust you, an Internet random, over a published academic? You need references. – Oddthinking Jul 03 '22 at 09:45