Student Exemplars: Historical Narratives

Author: Sean
​"Isaac Newton had a premature birth and wasn’t expected to survive. Tragically, his father died three months before he was born. Newton’s father had been a farmer in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire when Newton was born on January 4, 1642. The devastating Great Plague of London hadn’t infected the town of Woolsthorpe. The death of Newton’s father forced his mother to remarry a priest and Newton was sent to live with his grandmother at the age of three. Many scientists believe this was what caused Newton’s insecurities. Newton really hated his father and Newton threatened to burn down the house on top of him. But after his mother became widowed a second time, she came back and made him take over the farm on his father’s behalf. But when Newton was sent out to watch the cattle, he sat down under a tree and started reading. After being sent to a school in Grantham, the headmaster of the school acknowledged Newton’s intelligence, so he helped  him enroll in the Trinity of Cambridge."
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​Works Cited:
"Sir Isaac Newton." Britannica School. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 21 Nov. 2015. Accessed 11 Sep. 2016. <http://school.ebonline.com/levels/middle/article/108764>.

​Author: Tracy
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"After arriving at Trinity College, Columbia, Newton was fascinated and plunged into studying the ancient teachings of Aristotle. All of his work and progress was inspired by revolutionary thinkers. He was particularly intrigued by Descartes and other scholars in contrast to Aristotle. After completing his college career, he continued his journey, studying light, gravity, and mathematics. His creation of the three laws of motion was revolutionary - it was crucial to the near future."                                    
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Works Cited:
"Isaac Newton." Britannica School. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 8 Jul. 2011.. Accessed 7 Sep. 2016. <http://school.ebonline.com/levels/middle/article/276067#>.
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Author: Kyle
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"In the year Robert Hooke was born there was war fuming and there weren’t  many discoveries. However, in 1665 Robert Hooke detected something intriguing on a piece of a cork. He termed it “a cell” and soon he realized that there was not just one type of cell. Eleven years later, Dutch scientist  Anthony Van Leeuwenhoek in 1674 would identify the existence of living cells.

Like a family tree, where one person begins life, everything that we know about cells originates from Robert Hooke. Without Hooke’s work, it’s possible that we would still be confused about how our bodies actually function."

Works Cited: "Cell." Britannica School. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 26 Nov. 2015. Accessed 12 Sep. 2016. <http://school.ebonline.com/levels/middle/article/273572#198379.toc>.

Author: Hanbeom

"Robert Hooke was a great scientist and a great revolutionary thinker. He was always inquisitive. But what especially captured his curiosity was the microscopic realm, which led him to write, Micrographia in September 1665, the first best-selling science book. Oddly, the public ridiculed him. When Hooke was writing Micrographia, they thought the idea of him being interested in such tiny things like bugs was absurd. "A Sot,” a satirist of the time mocked him, “that has spent 2000 £ in Microscopes, to find out the nature of Eels in Vinegar, Mites in Cheese, and the Blue of Plums which he has subtly found out to be living creatures." Hooke's critics did not know how much Micrographia was truly radical."

​Works Cited:  "Robert Hooke." Robert Hooke. Web. 10 Sept. 2016.
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