Science Projects And Inventions

A simple compass indicates the direction of a magnetic field, but the magnetometer, invented by the German mathematician and scientist C. F. Gauss (1777-1855), could also measure its absolute strength. Before Gauss's time, people had compared the fields at two different spots on Earth by observing how long it took a suspended magnetized needle to make a certain number of oscillations. Gauss, and his physics professor friend Wilhelm Weber (1804-1891), gauged the field strength of the magnetized needle by measuring by how much it twisted two fibers from which it was suspended, when held at a right angle to Earth's field. Gauss and Weber founded the Magnetischer Verein (Magnetic Club), whose members measured not only magnetic fields all over Earth but also their variations with time, caused by slow changes in Earth's liquid iron core and by changes in the electron clouds that surround Earth. Electron clouds are influenced by more...

"The Stirling engine is fuel independent, it doesn't even need any fuel- the sun is enough!" Lund Institute of Technology,Sweden Scottish clergyman Reverend Robert Stirling (1790- 1878) began work on a new type of engine in the hope of replacing steam engines in the workplace. At the time steam engines were unstable, dangerous, and prone to explode, frequently causing horrific accidents. Spurred on by the number of people attending his parish who were in danger, he developed what would subsequently be called the Stirling or hot-air engine. The Stirling engine needs an external heat source that can be almost anything—solar, chemical, or nuclear energy. The engine is then powered by the heating and cooling of a gas contained in a cylinder. As the Stirling engine does not rely on explosions it is quiet in operation and at the time was much safer than the steam engine. Stirling's design added an more...

In 1901 Frank Hornby (1863-1936), of Liverpool, England, together with his business partner David Elliott. produced a model construction kit for children consisting of a collection of reusable perforated strips, plates, and angle girders that could be fastened with brass nuts and bolts. Called Mechanics Made Easy, the name was changed to Meccano® when Hornby took over the whole business in 1908. The toy appeared in a range of different sets, each enabling larger and more complicated models to be produced, culminating in the ultimate—set number 10.The accompanying instructions showed how items including a double-decker bus, a beam bridge, a cargo ship, a locomotive, and the Eiffel Tower could be constructed. Wheels, gears, axles, and motors (both steam and clockwork) were also provided. The great joy of Meccano® was its versatility and the fact that it could be reused again—breaking up the model just made and rebuilding an entirely different more...

Holography, coming from the Greek words holos (whole) and grafe (writing), is a form of photography that allows an image to be recorded in 3D. Discovered in 1948 by Hungarian born Dennis Gabor (1900-1979) while working for the Thomson-Houston company in Rugby, England, its early development was hampered by insufficient light sources. Gabor's holography stored 3D images by encoding them within a beam of light, but the mercury arc lamp he used produced variable results. The invention of the laser by a team of Russian and U.S. scientists in 1960 provided a pure, intense light that was ideal for creating holograms. The pulsed-ruby laser emits a very powerful burst of light that lasts a few nanoseconds and effectively freezes movement. The development of the laser enabled the first experiments in optically storing and retrieving images. The first laser-transmission hologram of 3D objects, a toy train and a bird, occurred in more...

Most useful technologies take time to mature; usually there are at least a couple of years between an idea's conception and a final working model. When it comes to inkjet printing, however, it took much longer—the patent for directing ink onto paper using electrostatic forces was granted to Lord Kelvin in 1867. Before the 1980s, printing from a computer was a slow, unrewarding task. The mechanisms behind those early printers used moving parts, pumps, and bladders that made them expensive, clumsy, and inefficient. The modern Inkjet was to change all this by using heat or electrostatic forces to produce uniform droplets and precision results. In Japan in the 1970s, Canon and Hewlett-Packard were competing with each other to produce the first reliable inkjet printer. Hewlett-Packard was beaten by a Canon researcher named Ichiro Endo who invented the first thermal inkjet printer in 1977. He was inspired when he saw a more...

"Rest your mill-turning hand... the nymphs [now carry out] the chores your hands performed." Antipater of Thessalonica, epigrammatist The earliest reference to watermills is found in the writings of Antipater of Thessalonica, describing their use for the grinding of grain in the first century B.C.E. These ancient Greek devices consisted of a millstone mounted on a vertical axis and rotated against a stationary stone bed by a horizontal paddle wheel spinning in a fast-flowing stream. This type of watermill has also been discovered throughout Ireland, Scandinavia, and China. The Romans were the first to devise a more efficient and versatile machine with a horizontal axis, which may have been inspired by ancient Eastern waterwheels, originally used for lifting water. The medieval Islamic nations embraced the watermill from the seventh century, building mills in bridges and on the sides of moored ships, or channeling water from dams to supply them. They more...

The first binoculars were really "opera glasses," and these small instruments consisted of two small Galilean telescopes side by side. The combination of a convex objective lens and a concave eyepiece produced a rather limited field of view and a magnification of about three. By the 1790s the Venetian optician Lorenzo Selva had introduced a central adjustable hinge, enabling the binocular eyepieces to be moved apart or close together. The center-wheel focusing mechanism was introduced about 1830. A Keplerian telescope system of two convex lenses was used for astronomical observations but this had a huge disadvantage for terrestrial use as the image was inverted. An Italian artillery officer, Paolo Ignazio Pietro Porro (1801-1875), overcame the problem of inversion by placing two prisms in a Z-shaped configuration between each objective lens and eyepiece. This widened the binoculars and separated the objective lenses. It also improved the user's stereoscopic vision and gave more...

"To carry stones and rakings of garden to places, appointed to receive'em or, to carry earth...." Francis Gentil, The Solitary Gardener (1706) The wheelbarrow is reputed to have been invented by a Chinese chancellor, Zhuge Liang (181-234) during the Han Dynasty, who used the device in military campaigns to transport supplies for injured soldiers. It was said to have been kept secret because of the advantages it gave the Chinese over their enemies. It was also used for early Chinese agriculture, which was said to have been thirty times more efficient than that in Europe. Designed to transport heavy loads, wheelbarrows are now used in the construction industry as well as in gardening. A wheelbarrow is a small cart, with one or two wheels, designed to be pushed by one person using two handles at the rear. Chinese wheelbarrows often had two wheels, and the Chinese sometimes attached sails to more...

"In a way I represent the third generation of Nobel laureates in physics." Donald Glaser, on receiving his Nobel Prize The story goes that Donald Glaser [b. 1926), a faculty member at the University of Michigan, was drinking a nice cold beer when he got the inspiration for what would eventually earn him the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1952 he invented the very first bubble chamber, which was no bigger than a thumb. The idea was that subatomic particles, accelerated by a particle accelerator, could pass through a chamber containing a liquid. Under the right conditions a trail of tiny bubbles would be created as a particle passed through. By photographing and analyzing the bubbles, physicists could gain precious information about the nature of particles. In 2006 Glaser denied that the bubbles in beer inspired him, though he did use beer as an early experimental liquid. Irrespective of more...

The ancient Romans tried to keep their buildings cool during hot weather by pumping water from aqueducts through the walls of their houses, whereas in Southeast Asia people hung wet grass mats over the windows to lower the temperature of air inside. Modem air conditioning, which arrived in 1902, is the continuation of this rudimentary principle. Willis Carrier (1876-1950) of Buffalo, New York, developed the fundamental scientific theories of air conditioning. His first system was designed for use in a printing plant. Changes in the temperature and humidity of the plant were causing the ink nozzles to be out of line, which made color printing problematic. Carrier was assigned with the task of fixing this problem. His early system, which made use of spraying nozzles to cool and dehumidify the air, was large, extremely expensive, and rather dangerous because it relied on the use of ammonia as a coolant. For more...