Science Projects And Inventions

"How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?" Author unknown The development of the safety match in 1844 by the Swedish chemistry professor Gustaf Erik Pasch (1788- 1862) followed the invention of the friction match. Pasch replaced the dangerous white phosphorus in the flammable mixture coating the match head with nontoxic red phosphorus, which was far. Less flammable. He also removed the phosphorus from the mixture at the head of the match and added it to a specially prepared striking surface. The striking surface was made from red phosphorus and powdered glass, leaving a composition of antimony(lll) sulfide and potassium chlorate on the match head. Some of the red phosphorus was converted to white by friction heat as the match was struck. The small amount of white phosphorus then ignites, starting the combustion of the match. more...

Buttons have been attached to clothing for around 5,000 years, but our Bronze Age ancestors used them more for ornamentation than for their potential as a fastener. In their early incarnations, buttons were simply added to clothes for decoration, while the clothes were fastened by pins and belts. The buttons were usually hand-carved from bone, wood, or horn. It was the Greeks who first came up with the idea of using buttons to fasten clothes. The first "buttonhole" was simply a loop of thread through which a button could be passed to create a fastening. However, buttons were not adopted in Europe until the return of the Crusaders in the thirteenth century. The introduction of this new fastening coincided with a new trend for "form-fitted" clothing and its popularity soared. By 1250, the French had established the Button Makers' Guild. In fact, the word "button" probably derives from the French more...

"Brearley launched his 'rustless steel' (later renamed... 'stainless') on the world with great gusto" IP Review: Accidental Inventions Stainless steel is an alloy of iron and chromium. It does not corrode in contact with air and water, stays bright, and can be polished. The chromium, which has a great affinity for oxygen, protects the iron by forming a molecular layer of chromium oxide at the surface, preventing contact between iron and oxygen. Harry Brearley (1871-1948) was head of the research team at the Brown Firth company in Sheffield, England, when the firm was commissioned to develop an erosion-resistant metal for gun barrels. Brearley experimented with iron-chromium alloys, which were known to have higher melting points than steel. He varied the proportion of chromium between 6 and 15 percent and also changed the carbon content until he developed an alloy with 12.8 percent chromium and 0.24 percent carbon. The alloy was more...

"Supercomputers will achieve one human brain capacity by 2010, and [PCs] by about 2020" Raymond Kurzweil, inventor and futurist A computer has two fundamentally different types of memory. The main memory is Direct RAM (DRAM), which represents the active storage components of a computer's memory. DRAM is fast, but it stores relatively little information. The other type of memory is the hard drive, which uses a solid, locally magnetized, metal disc to store information. (For this reason, a powerful magnet should never be placed on top of a laptop.) The hard drive uses a single "pick-up" to read the information while the disc spins beneath it. This process takes a long time by computer standards. In 2005 IBM demonstrated a possible alternative in the form of the "millipede"—so-called because it looks like one. The millipede uses nanotechnology to store information in tiny depressions on the surface of a silicon-treated polymer. more...

"Tie the [handkerchief] corners to the extremities of the cross, so you have the body of a kite..." Benjamin Franklin, to Peter Collinson,1752 The kite was first invented in China about 3,000 years ago. The first recorded construction of a kite was by the Chinese philosopher Mo Zi (c. 470-391 B.C.E.) who spent three years building it from wood. Materials ideal for kite building, such as silk for the sail material and bamboo for a strong, light frame, were plentiful in China, and kites were soon used for many purposes. Stories and records from ancient China mention kites that were used to measure distances, to test the wind, and to communicate during military maneuvers. The earliest Chinese kites were often fitted with musical instruments to create sounds as they were flown; they were decorated with mythical symbols. The first kites were flat and rectangular in shape, but kites are now more...

It is hard to imagine how popular music might have evolved without the use of the synthesizer and other such electronic innovations. Although Dr. Robert Moog is a household name for his pioneering efforts in this field, important groundwork was done several decades earlier by a Canadian physicist and instrument designer named Hugh Le Caine (1914-1977). One of his instruments in particular, the electronic sackbut, is now widely recognized as being the first voltage-controlled synthesizer. Developed at the University of Toronto, Canada, in 1945, Le Caine's sackbut featured a piano-type keyboard built into an old desk. Unlike most of the early commercial synthesizers that appeared at the start of the 1970s, Le Caine's instrument was touch- sensitive; the characteristics of the sound altered according to how lightly or forcefully the keyboard was played, giving the sackbut much the same potential expressiveness as a real acoustic instrument. Two other particularly innovative more...

“... the balls... will touch in one point only between the load and its resistance...” Leonardo da Vinci, The Madrid Codices (c. 1490) Ball bearings are a low-cost method of allowing different parts of a mechanism to rotate past each other without much energy loss from friction. They have many uses, including in bicycles, gyroscopes, electric motors, and turbines. They did not come into general use until the Industrial Revolution, but the concept has been around for more than 2,000 years. Roman Emperor Caligula (12-41 C.E.) had two large ships built at Lake Nemi. When the remains of these ships were recovered in the early 1930s, marine archeologists found the earliest known ball bearings. There were two types found—bronze spheres and wooden balls. The wooden ball bearings supported a rotating table, similar to a lazy Susan or dumbwaiter. Prior to this discovery historians had believed that Leonardo da Vinci invented more...

"A teacher told Kapany that light could travel only in a straight line. Kapany set out to prove him wrong." Fortune Magazine (1999) Optical fiber, made from glass or plastic, is used to guide light from a source to another location. First used in medicine to examine internal organs, the technology has since been developed for many applications, including telecommunications. Indian-born Narinder Singh Kapany (b 1927) is the father of fiber optics. While undertaking research at Imperial College in London in 1952, Kapany drew out fine filaments of optical-quality glass and found that when he shone a light in at one end, it emerged unchanged from the other, even if the fiber was twisted. The concept behind optical fibers was first shown by Irish inventor John Tyndall, who used the principle to illuminate water fountains in the 1850s. Kapany discovered that light was guided by total internal reflection within the more...

"It shall scatter the darkness of ignorance, and cause a light... to shine amongst men." Johannes Gutenberg, printer Writing was an important step in the advancement of civilization, but few books were produced and they reached a limited number of people. Such books were usually of a religious nature, handwritten in Latin, and copied by clerks for the clergy and the nobility. It was only when the printing press was developed that knowledge and ideas were spread more widely. The earliest form of press incorporated a wooden block with raised letters on one side. Such blocks were arranged in a frame and inked, so that when pressed onto paper an impression of the letters was produced. Unfortunately the blocks disintegrated with use, and so could not produce many copies; it was very time- consuming for craftsmen to produce new blocks for letters and illustrations. In 1450 Johannes Gutenberg (circa 1400-1468), more...

"Many a man began to wonder how he had got along without one." Time magazine Shaving without soap or water had been the dream of men (and probably some women) for centuries. The traditional "cutthroat" razor had given way to the safety razor in the late nineteenth century, but shaving was still a wet, time-consuming, and delicate operation. The electric, or dry, razor was patented by the U.S. inventor Jacob Schick (1878-1937) in 1928. Having dabbled with some very unwieldy devices, powered directly by household electricity and large external motors, Schick's most successful innovation was finding a way to house a small but powerful electrical motor inside a handheld shell. The motor drove a sharp, sliding cutter capable of slicing through a beard. All the parts were contained neatly within a Bakelite case. After a slow start, the first successful Schick electric razor appeared in 1931. As the design improved, more...