The story appears on

Page A7

June 29, 2010

GET this page in PDF

Free for subscribers

View shopping cart

Related News

Home » Nation

Is China too hot for Newton's apple?

A UNIVERSITY in Guangdong Province is offering a 100,000-yuan reward (US$14,726) for growing an apple tree in south China's hot climate from a cutting from the tree that inspired Sir Isaac Newton's law of gravity.
The cutting was donated to Shantou University by Hong Kong's richest man Li Ka-shing who had been given it by Cambridge University, China News Service reported yesterday.
But the campus of Shantou University in Guangdong is too hot for apple trees to grow. The university said the reward had attracted over 500 ideas of how to successfully grow the tree since last month.
A forestry scientist Zhang Jianguo said it was possible to grow apple trees in south China but it was clearly a waste of money to build a greenhouse just for one apple tree.
At present, the cutting is still at Trinity College in Cambridge, waiting for Shantou University's final decision to move it to China.
This May, a fragment of Newton's apple tree was on a journey into space on United States shuttle Atlantis.
The stunt was dubbed as a unique test of the scientist's theory of gravity.



 

Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.

沪公网安备 31010602000204号

Email this to your friend