Discussing the Newtonian conception of uniform circular motion using ICTs

Uniform circular motion is a puzzling phenomenon to the common sense of those who study it for the first time, as a result of the resultant forces maintaining the movement being directed perpendicular to the direction of motion at each instant of the trajectory. In this work, with the help of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), we highlight how this fact can be mitigated in light of Isaac Newton’s idea of discretizing a particle’s circular motion into a polygonal motion intermediated by infinite collisions. Besides the visualization of the trajectories, through the simulations, to illustrate the transition between the discrete polygonal movement and the continuous circular one, we show that the behavior of the angular velocity of the particle along the polygon brings a signature of the referred transition.

Keywords:
History of Science; circular motion; ICTs