Science Projects And Inventions

"[The Hamilton Beach drink mixer] became as much a tradition as hot dogs, apple pie, or baseball." Goodman's online shopping catalog Chester Beach grew up on a Wisconsin farm, and it was there that his natural aptitude for repairing and fixing machinery was nurtured. He met his future business partner L. H. Hamilton, when they were both working at an electrical motor company in Wisconsin in the early 1900s. Realizing their potential for a profitable future, the pair formed the Hamilton Beach Manufacturing Company. What made the company so successful was essentially Beach's invention of a high-speed, lightweight universal motor. The motor was able to safely and consistently achieve up to 7,200 revolutions per minute and its ability to run on both AC (alternating current) and DC (direct current) meant that it was extremely adaptable. The motor was used in their food mixer—which was a huge success for the company—and more...

“What have you done with my child [the radio broadcast]? You have debased this child..." Lee De Forest, Chicago Tribune (1946) In 1904, British physicist-John Ambrose Fleming (1849-1945) developed what he called an "oscillation valve." Later rechristened the "diode," it Is universally recognized as the first true electronic device. Two years later, building on Fleming's work, American electrical engineer Lee De Forest (1873-1961) created the Audion vacuum tube—the first valve amplifier. De Forest's major innovation was in creating a valve that would not only rectify the AC current, but boost it. The Audion contained the same filament, cathode and plate/anode design of the Fleming valve, but placed between them was a zigzag of wire called a grid. A small electric current applied to the grid would result in much current shifting from the filament to the plate. Thus was born the first electrical amplifier. With its three active electrodes, De more...

The idea of creating a man-made diamond is a very appealing one—a kind of alchemy (the process of turning base metal into gold), but one that is, remarkably, achievable. Synthetic diamonds actually come in two kinds—simulant (which are diamond-like in looks and structure) and synthetic, where the chemical structure of the stone is also the same. The latter is a "true" synthetic diamond. Simulant diamonds made from silicon carbide were first discovered by Henri Moissan in a meteorite crater in 1893.They were later reproduced by him and others in the lab, most fampusly Willard Hersey, whose diamond can still be seen at the McPherson Museum in Kansas. It was not until 1953, however, when a team led by Baltzar von Platen (1898-1984), working in secret for the Swedish electrical company ASEA, actually succeeded in generating sufficient heat and pressure to create the first synthetic diamond. Their machine generated 83,000 atmospheres more...

Humphry Davy 0778-1829) first noted the anesthetic effects of nitrous oxide—a colorless, almost odorless gas—while experimenting at the Pneumatic Institute in Bristol, England. Davy (best known for inventing the miner's lamp) realized that nitrous oxide both made him want to laugh (coining the term "laughing gas") and relieved his toothache. In 1800 he published a book stating that the gas might "be used with advantage during surgical operations." After Davy's observations, nitrous oxide became popular at laughing parties and fairground shows, but it was not used in surgery for another forty years. At one fair in the United States, Horace Wells, a Connecticut dentist, observed a man who gashed his leg while under the influence of nitrous oxide. He seemed to be pain-free, and Wells immediately had one of his own teeth removed while breathing in the gas. In January 1845, Wells demonstrated the use of nitrous oxide in a more...

The most sticky, hot, and humid places in the world tend to be found in Southeast Asia, near coastal regions around the equator. Anyone who is not used to the heavy, damp, often motionless air can find them to be very uncomfortable places to live. Humidity, the moisture content of the air, tends to be high in these places because the heat of the sun causes the air to absorb increased moisture from the surrounding seas and oceans—the air in cold latitudes is relatively dry. But it was not until the 1600s that people were able to measure air humidity. Technically, Leonardo da Vinci designed the first crude hygrometer in the 1440s, but in 1664 the first practical hygrometer, used to measure the moisture content of air, was invented by the Italian scientist Francesco Folli (1624-1685). Folli's invention was a finely decorated device, made of brass, that contained a mounted more...

"In the mid-1980s... music networking through things called audio cassettes was at its peak." Carl Howard, alternative music network pioneer Like SMS (short message service) text messaging three decades later, the audiotape cassette (or "compact cassette," to give it its official name) is a classic case of an innovation created for one purpose that finds unexpected success for another. Although the cassette (derived from the French word meaning "little box") was an audio storage medium, Philips saw little potential for its use within the high-fidelity music market. It had, in fact, been designed primarily for use in dictation machines and cheap portable recorders. Introduced in 1963, the cassette slowly established itself in the decade that followed. Its success was largely due to Philips's decision to license aspects of their technology free of charge. The tape used in the early cassette cartridges was thin, low-quality, and only half the width of more...

More than a million years ago, members of the species Homo erectus were making stone tools designed for chopping that can be described as early hand axes. They were teardrop-shaped and roughly made, flaked on either side to form a sharp cutting edge. However, not until the rise of farming during the late Stone Age did such tools come to resemble what we would now recognize as the axe. There was widespread trade in these tools around this time and stone axes have been uncovered at many Neolithic meeting places. Axes clearly designed to be mounted (hatted) on handles have been found at a site near Mount Hagen in New Guinea. By analyzing samples of pollen from around the same era—thought be around 8,000 years ago—archeologists have concluded that they were probably employed in the opening up of the rain forest, during agricultural development, to allow light to reach crops. more...

The origins of the spinning wheel remain unsure, but the machine is thought to have been invented around 700 in India, where it was used to turn fibers into thread or yarn that were then woven into cloth. Earlier hand-spinning methods were superseded by mounting the spindle horizontally and rotating it by slowly turning a large wheel with the right hand. The fiber was held at an angle in the operator's left hand to produce the necessary twist. The spinning wheel reached Europe in the Middle Ages, becoming part of a cottage industry that used simple hand-operated tools. It persisted in this context until the eighteenth century. In Britain the new cotton industry was modeled on the old woolen cloth industry. The most complicated apparatus was the loom, worked by a single weaver and normally kept in an upstairs room where a window provided natural light. The weavers were usually more...

"What is life? It is a flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime…” Crowfoot, chief of the Blackfoot First Nation Native Americans on the Great Plains led nomadic lives. They used buffalo for almost everything, eating their meat and making clothes and tent coverings from their skins. Living on herds of animals that were always on the move, they were constantly on the move too, which meant living in tents and owning only what could be carried to the next camp. Ideally, however, people like to carry more than can fit into one bag. On roadways and hard ground, carts are the best solution, and in the far north snow and ice lie on the ground and dragging a sled is easy because the ground is slippery. Traveling across soft soil, however, neither of these options work. The response of more...

"Well we've got a new device here. It's not a transistor, it's something different." William Boyle, coinventor Charge-coupled device (CCD) technology is the bedrock of digital cameras and video but it started out as a new form of memory. One day in 1969 William Boyle (b. 1924) and George Smith (b. 1930) were brainstorming at Bell Labs in New Jersey and decided to play around with merging two of the new technologies that were being worked on— semiconductor bubble memory and the video phone. The pair worked on a new principle of handling small pockets of electrical charge on a silicon chip that was similar to the work being done on moving microscopic "bubbles" of magnetism around on various materials. They called their invention the charge-coupled device. It soon became clear that the small packets of charge on the CCD could be put there using the photoelectric effect, which meant more...