Isaac Newton text message story: Newton and the apple delivery
A short, funny Instagram DM-style chat starring Isaac Newton (1642 to 1727), English mathematician and physicist, with a delivery rider. A man whose famous law is about falling things is the worst possible person to meet standing under a tree.
Read the chat
- Delivery rider: Hi Isaac, I am outside with your apples
- Isaac: Wonderful. Where are you exactly
- Delivery rider: under your tree
- Isaac: do not stand under the tree
- Delivery rider: why not
- Isaac: they fall. it is a whole law
- Delivery rider: one just hit me
- Isaac: I will update the law
- Delivery rider: can you just come get your apples
Free to try, no account needed until you export.
Who was Isaac Newton?
- He published the Principia in 1687, setting out the laws of motion and universal gravitation.
- He later said that seeing an apple fall helped him think about gravity; the story of an apple hitting his head is a later embellishment.
- He also served as Master of the Royal Mint.
The chat is invented. Isaac Newton never sent these messages, and the story is labelled as fiction wherever it appears.
How this chat is built
It runs 9 messages between Delivery rider and Isaac. Delivery rider writes 5 of them. The longest line is “Hi Isaac, I am outside with your apples” (Delivery rider) and the shortest is “why not” (Delivery rider). The word “your” comes back 3 times, which is where the rhythm of the joke comes from. It closes on “can you just come get your apples” from Delivery rider.
It is shown in the Instagram DM look. In the editor you can switch it to any other look and the whole conversation follows.