Science Projects And Inventions

One day in 1952, John W. Hetrick was driving, with his wife and daughter in the front seat, when he had to swerve and brake quickly to avoid an obstacle. Instinctively, he and his wife put their arms out to shield their daughter in case of a crash. This inspired him to provide automobiles with air bags to protect people during accidents. Hetrick had been an engineer in the U.S. Navy during World War II, and he recalled a compressed-air torpedo accidentally turning itself on, causing its canvas cover to shoot "up into the air, quicker than you could blink an eye." In 1952 Hetrick proposed using compressed air to inflate air bags rapidly during car crashes. He received a patent for his invention in 1953, but car manufacturers in the 1950s were more concerned with style than safety. Air bag technology improved and consumers became more safety conscious—the first more...

"My mother would buy paIe white margarine in a soft plastic pouch, with an orange dot in the middle" Food Reference website               In 1867 the French President, Napoleon III, offered a prize to the inventor of a butter substitute that would keep well, for use by the army, and be a cheap alternative for the poor. French chemist, Hippolyte Mege-Mouries won the prize with a substance he called oleomargarine, which he had developed from margaric acid, a mixture of palmitic and stearic acids. He established the first margarine factory in France and later expanded the business to the United States. But the business foundered and he died in obscurity in 1880. Mege-Mouries had, however, sold his product to the Dutch businessman Anton Jurgens who built a margarine business that merged with the Lever Brothers' business to form Unilever in 1929. Demand for margarine more...

"There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is becoming an endangered synthetic." Lily Tomlin, comedian and actress Polypropylene is one of the modem world's most important plastics. It is used as an artificial fiber in carpets, upholstery, and industrial ropes, as well as in food and toiletry bottles, toys, furniture, and car components. Polymers are very common in nature because they are the major components of hair, bones, muscles, and plant fibers. In the 1920s, scientists were working on how to make polymer chains longer and heavier, and therefore more useful. One of the first breakthroughs came in England in 1931, when polyethylene—the first man-made polymer with a high molecular weight—was made. Polyethylene dominated the global plastics market, but scientists were disappointed by its material weakness. The race to develop a better plastic was on. Italian scientist Giulio Natta (1903-1979) had been working with the German more...

Ralph Teetor (1890-1982), a prolific—and blind- inventor, was inspired to invent cruise control one day while taking a ride in a car driven by his lawyer. The lawyer had the habit of slowing down while talking and speeding up while listening. The car's jerky, rocking motion so annoyed Teetor that he became determined to invent a speed-control device. Teetor received his first patent on a cruise-control device in 1945 after a decade of tinkering, and it was first offered commercially on Chrysler's Imperial, New Yorker, and Windsor models in 1958. Early names for his invention included Controlmatic, Touchomatic, Pressomatic, and Speedostat, before people settled on the familiar Cruise Control. With cruise control, the driver sets the speed and the system then takes over the vehicle's throttle to maintain that speed. The cruise control gets its speed signal from a rotating driveshaft, the speedometer cable, a speed sensor on the wheels, more...

"Franklin D. Roosevelt was a 'TefIon® president' long before Teflon® was invented." Robert S. McElvaine, historian No one can dispute the value of the non-stick pan in today's kitchen. It is one of the best-selling utensils in kitchen history. Its story begins with the invention of Teflon" by the DuPont company in 1938. DuPont was researching refrigerants when it accidentally produced Poly Tetra Fluor Ethylene or PTFE The slippery substance was resistant to chemicals, temperature, electricity, mold, and fungus. DuPont used it to coat bread pans. In the early 1950s, French engineer Marc Gregoire heard about Teflon'8 from a colleague who used it to coat aluminum for-'industrial applications. Gregoire managed to find a way..to make Teflon" adhere to aluminum, and he then used it as a coating to prevent his fishing gear from tangling. His wife Colette then asked him if he could coat her cooking pans. He did, and more...

"What got me into this business was the curiosity about how the dial telephone system worked." Amos Joel In 1970, when he was working as an electrical engineer at Bell Labs, in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Amos Joel (b. 1918) came up with an idea that worked so well that many of us use it today without noticing that anything has happened at all. Joel had invented the idea of the cellular mobile phone. Cell phones existed prior to 1970, but they had problems. Since each call was made on a single channel, the number of simultaneous calls was limited to the number of available channels. Additionally, a cell phone user could not leave the base station area of coverage in which the call was initiated or the connection to the network would be lost. Joel's cellular mobile communication system proposed providing phone service to a geographic area by dividing more...

"The trebuchet was the dominant siege weapon... lasting 100 years after the [arrival] of gunpowder." University of Arkansas website The trebuchet was an ancient form of artillery that first appeared in China in the fifth century B.C.E. The weapon of mass destruction of its time, it was an improvement on the catapult. Unlike other catapults, such as the mangonel that uses twisted rope to provide power, the trebuchet uses a counterweight to provide its force. The trebuchet dominated long-range artillery until the sixteenth century, The main arm of a trebuchet is attached to a fulcrum in such a way that the end holding the counterweight is much closer to the fulcrum than the end that holds the projectile. As the counterweight is released, the short end of the arm drops downward rapidly. Because of the longer length on the other side of the fulcrum, the end holding the projectile is more...

"[The wheels are like] a cushion of air to the ground, rail, or track on which they run." Robert William Thompson Scottish-born engineer Robert William Thomson (c. 1822-1873) left school at age fourteen but within a couple of years he had managed to teach himself astronomy, chemistry, and the physics of electricity. By 'the time he was seventeen, he had his own workshop. Then at the tender age of twenty-three, he patented the "aerial wheel"—now known as the pneumatic tire. The tires consisted of a hollow belt of India rubber that could be inflated with "a cushion of air to the ground, rail or track on which they run." The idea was to provide people traveling over bumpy ground with a smoother ride. Unfortunately for Thomson, in 1845 there were no cars to take advantage of the new tire; nor were there any bicycles. The only applications of his innovation more...

"Seek wood already touched by fire. It is not then so very hard to set alight." African proverb Fire is an essential tool, control of which helped to start the human race on its path to civilization. The original source of fire was probably lightning, and for generation blazes ignited in this manner remained the only source of fire. Initially Peking Man, who lived around 500,000 B.C.E., was believed to be the earliest user of fire, but evidence uncovered in Kenya in 1981, and in South Africa in 1988, suggests that the earliest controlled use of fire by hominids dates from about 1,420,000 years ago. Fires were kept alive permanently because of the difficulty of reigniting them, being allowed to burn by day and damped down at night. Flint struck against pyrites or friction methods were the most widespread methods of producing fire among primitive people. The first human beings more...

The history of sewing is closely allied to the history of tools. The earliest needles ever discovered date from the Paleolithic era (the early Stone Age), around 25,000 B.C.E. Key finds from that period include needles in southwest France and near Moscow in Russia. These were made of ivory or bone, with an eyelet gouged out. Some have been found alongside the remains of foxes and hares that were used for their fur. Sewing gave our early ancestors the opportunity to make clothing more closely tailored to the human body, improving its insulation and comfort, as well as inviting decoration. Early scraps of cloth found in France and Switzerland have included decorative seeds or animal teeth sewn on by thread, applied perhaps with the aid of fishbones or thorns. Native Americans sewed with the tips of agave leaves. Metal needles were developed in the8rbh'zeAge (2000-800 B.C.E.) and initially were made more...