Science Projects And Inventions

Although the first patent application for a composting toilet was filed by Thomas Swinburne in 1838, the idea of recycling human waste was by no means new at this time. The Chinese had already been composting human and animal waste for use as fertilizer for thousands of years. However unattractive this process may seem, it is certainly more environmentally viable than a modern sewage system. Composting cuts down on water pollution, and human excreta contain valuable nutrients that can help farmers reduce the amount of chemical fertilizers they use on crops. Swinburne's "earth closet" was the first device that can be described as a composting toilet, that is, one that deposits earth or peat onto feces to kick start the composting process. But it was not until Henry Moule established the Moule Patent Earth-Closet Company in the 1860s that they became more commonly used. Some schools and military camps reportedly more...

"We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity —romantic love and gunpowder." Andre Maurois, novelist and writer Few inventions can have instigated as much misery to humankind as that of the seemingly innocuous gunpowder. Created by Chinese alchemists in the ninth century, gunpowder consists of a mixture of ground saltpeter (potassium nitrate), charcoal, and sulfur in approximate proportions of 75, 15, and 10 by weight. Known as "black powder," its exposure to an open flame produces an explosion that can propel an object great distances when contained in a tube closed at one end. The Chinese experimented with different levels of saltpeter content to design rockets. Arab chemists acquired knowledge of gunpowder in the thirteenth century, rapidly employing it for military purposes, including the production of a gun made from a bamboo tube reinforced with iron. The spread of information arrived in Europe, where gunpowder was more...

During a period spanning the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Slovakian mining town of Banska Stiavnica rose to fame both as a major source of gold and silver and as a center of excellence in the technologies needed to extract those precious metals. The area became synonymous with advances in ore extraction and processing. Fundamental among the many problems that mining engineers had to overcome at that time was the removal of water from shafts several hundred yards deep. Human and animal power played its part in no small measure; by the end of the seventeenth century, close to a thousand men and hundreds of horses were toiling around the clock to keep the existing pumping systems working. Steam-powered systems were put to the test. However, it was asked that if an abundance of water was the problem, why not work with water, exploit its energy potential, and turn it more...

"The band saw created a special era in American architecture... the gingerbread house was born." 200 Years of Woodworking (1976) Greek legend suggests that the first saw was made by Perdix, the nephew of the inventor Daedalus. He was inspired to create a cutting tool on observing the ridges on a fish's backbone. However, saws were probably, in use well before this; ancient Egyptians used serrated copper saw blades. The handsaw is limited by the need for people to power it. The circular saw, patented in the eighteenth century, helped alleviate that problem but also had its limitations, namely that it could cut no deeper than the radius of its disc. The band saw—a fast-moving cutting "strip" mounted in a machine—potentially solved both problems and has many advantages over the handsaw and the circular saw. William Newberry of London, England, was granted a patent for the first band saw in more...

When Thomas Edison first captured sound, his audio recordings, made using a wax cylinder, were a simple reflection of a single moment in time. During the 1940s, when a number of experimenters began looking at different approaches to audio recording, guitarist and inventor Les Paul (b. 1915) worked on the idea of capturing a number of single events and playing them back simultaneously to produce something completely new—a synthetic recording. In 1947 Les Paul's experiments came to fruition. Capitol Records issued his instrumental solo "Lover (When You're Near Me)," featuring Paul playing eight different guitar parts at the same time Paul made the recording using two wax-cylinder recording machines; after making one recording on the first cylinder the second would be of himself playing along with the first recording. He continued in this way until he had built up all eight parts. This pioneering recording technique is now referred to more...

"Day is pushed out by day, and each new moon hastens to its death..." Horace, Odes, Book II The earliest known lunar calendar is in the caves at Lascaux, southwest France, and dates from around 15,000 B.C.E. Various series of spots represent half of the moon's near-monthly cycle, followed by a large empty square, which perhaps indicates a clear sky. A lunar calendar counts months (a period of 29.530588 days) and is based on the phases of the moon. Months have twenty-nine and thirty days alternately, and additional days are added every now and then to keep step with the actual moon phase. The lunar calendar was widely used in parts of the ancient world for religious observation. Agriculturally the lunar calendar is confusing as it takes no account of annual seasonal variations in temperature, daylight length, plant growth, animal migration, and mating. The lunar month divides into the solar more...

The two world wars led to many breakthroughs in all areas of science and technology. It was not, however, an easy time to get independently funded inventions off the ground, as German engineer Konrad Zuse (1910-1995) discovered. In 1936 Zuse invented the Z1, an electromechanical binary computer, but it was completely obliterated by World War II bombing that left no trace of it or its blueprints behind. Work on the Z2 was difficult because the war made it impossible for Zuse to work with other computer engineers from Britain or the United States, but he still managed to complete it in 1940. The Z3, a more sophisticated version of the Z2, was finished in 1941, partially funded by contributions from the DVL (the German Experimentation Institution for Aviation). It was the first fully functional program- controlled electromechanical digital computer in the world. Sadly this too was destroyed in the war, more...

Before American Cyrus McCormick (1809-1884) invented the reaper, crops were tediously gathered by hand, usually with the aid of a hand-swung scythe. Often landowners were limited by what they could reap in the fall rather than by the size of their land or the amount of seed that could be sown in the spring, McCormick's father had started to work on the design of a "reaper," a horsedrawn machine that could automatically cut and bundle corn, but he was unsuccessful and passed his researches over to his son. Cyrus McCormick's reaper design of 1831 had a frame that he would place over himself and his horse to stabilize the contraption while its large, mechanical, armlike cutters would cut the crop. McCormick was not happy with his first design and delayed obtaining a patent until 1834, when a rival reaper inventor appeared in Maryland. However, the reaper did not catch on, more...

The dynamos produced by Michael Faraday and Joseph Henry in the 1830s were little more than laboratory curiosities. It was a Belgian industrialist and electrical engineer, Zenobe Theophile Gramme (1826- 1901), who developed, in 1869, the first high-voltage, smooth, direct-current generator. In 1871 Gramme and the French engineer Hippolyte  Fontaine entered a  manufacturing partnership. In 1873 the pair discovered that their dynamo machine was reversible and could thus be converted into an electrical motor. Their 1873 exhibit at the Vienna Exposition convinced the world of the ease of generating electricity and conversely that: electricity could be reliably utilized to do heavy work. By 1880 Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti had patented the Ferranti dynamo, a machine that he developed with the help of William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin). The London Electric Supply Corporation commissioned Ferranti to design the world's first modem power station, at Deptford, England. He designed the generating plant more...

“From backyard tuners to luxury limousine manufacturers, they've all relied on Buchl's turbocharger." Don Sherman, Automobile magazine The turbocharger is similar to the supercharger but, instead of mechanically forcing extra air into the engine, it uses the exhaust to drive a turbine that boosts air in. Swiss engineer Alfred Buchi (1879-1959) realized that using a turbine to make use of engine exhaust would actually recover otherwise lost energy to make the combustion cycle much more efficient. Turbochargers and diesel engines fit together perfectly since diesel engines have no throttle to stall the air flow to the turbine. They were first implemented commercially in two German passenger ships, in which the addition of the turbocharger increased the horsepower from 1,750 to 2,500. Putting turbochargers into cars, however, proved a little harder. As it is the hot air from the combustion that drives the turbine, the materials that make it must be more...