Science Projects And Inventions

"All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself." J. S. Bach, composer and organist (attributed) Long before the development of the pipe organ, its essential musical element—a set of pipes of different sizes that resonate at different pitches when air is passed through them—existed in the form of the syrinx. This simple instrument was used widely throughout the eastern Mediterranean region. However, in 240 B.C.E., Ktesibios (c. 285-222 B.C.E.), a Greek engineer, developed a way of supplying a steady flow of air to the pipes. He attached them to a closed box into which air was pumped using pressurized water, creating and maintaining steady air pressure in the box. The pipes were opened or closed to the air source by a simple switch system operated from a keyboard. This device was originally called hydraulis, later organum, and produced loud more...

"There are... fixed boundaries, beyond and about which that which is right cannot exist." Horace, Satires, Book 1 (35 B.C.E.) Vernier callipers are a sliding, adjustable-jaw device for measuring distances of a few centimeters to an accuracy of 0.01 centimeters. A main (ruler) scale is marked off with 0.1 centimeter divisions. Sliding parallel and alongside the main scale is a much smaller vernier scale on which ten divisions are equally spaced over 0.9 centimeters of the main scale. To subdivide the 0.1 centimeter division on the main scale into ten, the user has to select the nearest vernier division that is in line with one of the main scale divisions. The scale was invented by French scientist and engineer Pierre Vernier (1580-1637), and the details were published in his 1631 book, La Construction, I'usage, et les proprietes du quadrant nouveau de mathematiques (The Construction, Uses, and Properties of a New more...

Buildings erected using preformed, shaped bricks of dried mud date back to around 7500 B.C.E. Examples have been found by archeologists in Cayonu in the upper Tigris Valley and close to Diyarbakirin southeast Anatolia, both in modern-day Turkey. More recent bricks, dating from between 7000 and 6400 B.C.E., have been found in Jericho in the Jordan Valley and in Catalhoyuk, again in Turkey. These early bricks were made of mud molded by hand and then left out to dry and harden in the sun. The bricks were then laid into walls using a simple mud mortar. Mud is an exceptionally good material for building in dry climates: it is readily available wherever agriculture is practiced, it may be dug from riverbeds, and it has good structural and thermal qualities. Some years later, mud bricks were shaped in wooden molds, enabling a form of organized mass production to take place. This more...

A major weapon advancement in the complicated history of ancient warfare, the invention of the pike in 400 B.C.E. is credited for the Macedonian takeover of Greece, Egypt, and parts of Asia. Philip II of Macedonia (382-336 B.C.E.), father of the famous Alexander the Great, is credited with adopting the pike (also called the sarissa), as well as the Macedonian phalanx, a type of infantry formation of soldiers. The pike was around 20 feet (6 m) long, and this great length enabled soldiers to strike while they were themselves out of range of shorter weapons. The phalanx consisted of a tight formation of soldiers and pikes. The men in the front of the phalanx would hold their pikes straight out, creating an equivalent depth of about five rows of men. Before Philip's invention, the Macedonian army was considered ill-equipped and ill-trained.  The combination of the pike and the phalanx formation more...

A distinguished English physician, John Ayrton Paris (1785-1856), was the inventor of the thaumatrope, a popular children's toy of Victorian Britain. It was conceived, not as a form of entertainment, but to demonstrate an optical phenomenon. The thaumatrope is a simple device: a disc with a picture on each side and two pieces of attached string. The disc is rotated by hand to coil the attached strings, and then the strings are quickly pulled apart. This causes the disc to rotate rapidly, enabling the pictures on either side to be visible in quick succession; the two images are interpreted by the human eye as a single image. This phenomenon is known as persistence of vision and was demonstrated to a meeting of the Royal College of Physicians in 1824. One of Paris's exhibits featured a bird on one side of the disk and an empty birdcage on the other; when more...

“I hate to advocate drugs...to anyone, but they've always worked for me." Hunter S. Thompson, journalist and author MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine) was originally synthesized by Anton Kollisch (1888-1916)— who was working for German pharmaceutical giant Merck—in 1912 as a side product to a drug intended to control bleeding. It was routinely patented in 1914, and Kollisch died two years later, oblivious to the impact that his discovery would have in years to come. MDMA found its way onto the streets of America during the 1960s. Legend has it that the drug was deliberately developed as an appetite suppressor for use in World War I, but there is no documented evidence that human trials were carried out. It is also "unclear" whether experiments carried out in 1959 by Merck employee Wolfgang Fruhstorfer may have involved tests on humans. The experiments were carried out with an unknown partner, creating even more mystery as more...

The French painter and army officer Nicolas-Jacques Conte patented the process to make pencils in 1795, but it was another Frenchman, Bernard Lassimone, a mathematician, who filed the first patent for a pencil sharpener, in 1828. Up until that point pencils were sharpened using a penknife, which itself derived its name from its use in sharpening quills into pens. it was not until 1847, however, that the pencil sharpener really took off in its modern form, and this was with the invention of a new sharpener by Therry des Estwaux. Perhaps, though, the most significant advance in pencil sharpener design was that by the African-American inventor John Lee Love. He designed the portable pencil sharpener, known as the Love Sharpener, which remains in wide use today, especially by artists. The pencil is placed in the ... -opening of the sharpener and rotated by hand, with the shavings being collected in more...

"Those who drag in the use of human blood for internal remedies of diseases...sin gravely." Thomas Bartholin, professor of anatomy, 1616-1680 James Blundell (1790-1878), an obstetrician and gynecologist at Guy's Hospital, London, realized that blood transfusions offered a possible solution for women who suffered severe hemorrhage following childbirth. Blundell was familiar with the work of John Leacock, who, in 1816, had reported experiments in cats and dogs, establishing that the donor and recipient had to be of the same species. The first human transfusion supervised by Blundell did not in fact involve an obstetric case, but a thirty- five-year-old man with stomach cancer. On December 22,1818, the man was transfused with about fourteen ounces of blood administered by a syringe in small amounts from several human donors. Despite a slight improvement, the patient died fifty-six hours later. To facilitate transfusions Blundell devised an apparatus, known as Blundell's Impeller, consisting of more...

"The Internet... allows [us] at each level of the network to innovate free of any central control." Vinton Cerf When we send files or e-mails to others over the Internet, few of us care how our messages arrive, almost instantaneously, at a distant terminal, with no direct connection between the two. But without the decentralized magic of Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), these remarkable events would not be possible. TCP and IP are separate networking protocols, but so intimately linked in use that they are generally referred to as a single entity. Developed by Robert Kahn (b. 1938), Vinton Cerf (b. 1943), and others, and initially used on the U.S. Government's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) packet-switching network in 1983, TCP and IP permitted an ever growing number of remote networks to connect to each other and ultimately mature into the Internet. In essence, TCP and IP more...

"At the campaign of Yuzhang, he ordered his troops to propel the flying fire' on the besieged city...." Compendium of Important Military Techniques (1044) In 904 at the siege of Yuzhang, in southeastern China, attacking troops were ordered to launch "flying fire" on the city gates, burning them down and allowing their army to enter and capture the city. This is the first use of "fire arrows," a term that originally meant an arrow carrying a tub of gunpowder that would explode when the arrow impacted. The Compendium of Important Military Techniques (1044), written by Tseng Kung-Liang, gives details of how to launch fire arrows by gunpowder rather than using bows. By 1232, when the Chinese were fighting the Mongols, a much more recognizable rocket was being made using the exploding tubes to propel the arrows. The tubes were capped at the top, but open at the bottom, and tied to more...