Did you solve it? Isaac Newton’s tower drop puzzle
Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The GuardianView image in fullscreen Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The GuardianAlex Bellos's Monday puzzleMathematicsDid you solve it? Isaac Newton’s tower drop puzzleThe solution to the seventeenth century stumperAlex BellosMon 28 Sep 2026 11.48 EDTLast modified on Mon 28 Sep 2026 11.56 EDTSharePrefer the Guardian on GoogleEarlier today I set you a puzzle that Isaac Newton posed in 1679 in a latter to Robert Hooke. I mentioned that the answer is counter-intuitive, and also gave you the hint that it might have something to do with figure skating.
- ▪Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The GuardianView image in fullscreen Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The GuardianAlex Bellos's Monday puzzleMathematicsDid you solve it?
- ▪Isaac Newton’s tower drop puzzleThe solution to the seventeenth century stumperAlex BellosMon 28 Sep 2026 11.48 EDTLast modified on Mon 28 Sep 2026 11.56 EDTSharePrefer the Guardian on GoogleEarlier today I set you a puzzle that Isaac Newto
- ▪I mentioned that the answer is counter-intuitive, and also gave you the hint that it might have something to do with figure skating.
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| Original publisher | The Guardian — Science |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/sep/28/did-you-solve-it-isaac-newtons-tower-drop-puzzle |
| Publication time | Mon, 28 Sep 2026 15:48:00 GMT |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-28T18:25:14.477Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-28T18:25:14.477Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
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| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | slVq5aK3lwaI · 2 stories |
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| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
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| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
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| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
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Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The GuardianView image in fullscreen Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The GuardianAlex Bellos's Monday puzzleMathematicsDid you solve it? Isaac Newton’s tower drop puzzleThe solution to the seventeenth century stumperAlex BellosMon 28 Sep 2026 11.48 EDTLast modified on Mon 28 Sep 2026 11.56 EDTSharePrefer the Guardian on GoogleEarlier today I set you a puzzle that Isaac Newton posed in 1679 in a latter to Robert Hooke. I mentioned that the answer is counter-intuitive, and also gave you the hint that it might have something to do with figure skating. Here’s the problem again, with its solution.The tower dropThe first known diagram of the puzzle, from Claude Dechales Cursus seu Mundus Mathematicus (1674).An object is dropped from a high tower.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at The Guardian — Science.
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