Science Projects And Inventions

"Steam is no stronger now than it was a hundred years ago but it is put to better use." Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer In the late eighteenth century, there were many wagonways and tramways in Europe. These had iron rails and horsedrawn wagons fitted with flanged wheels. The first steam locomotive to run on rails was built by Richard Trevithick (1771-1833) of Cornwall, England. Trevithick was encouraged to develop an engine that was more efficient and cheaper to run than the low-pressure Watt and Newcomen type; he was the first to harness high-pressure steam. Trevithick's Puffing Devil (1801) and London Steam Carriage (1803) were demonstration steam vehicles, but on February 21, 1804, his Penydarren locomotive pulled five wagons, seventy passengers, and 10 tons of iron down an iron railway between Merthyr Tydfil and Abercynnon in south Wales. This reasonably reliable and robust machine proved that heavy trucks could be hauled more...

"For NASA, space is still a high priority. ...If we don't succeed we run the risk of failure." Dan Quayle, U.S. vice-president (1989-1993) X-rays are absorbed by Earth's atmosphere so one has to climb above the atmosphere to see them. NASA's Uhuru (1970) and the United Kingdom's Ariel V (1974) were spin-stabilized satellites that discovered around 400 bright X-ray sources. Astronomers realized that X-rays provide vital clues to the death-throws of stars, specifically supernova explosions and the final transitions to white dwarf, neutron star, and black hole states. X-rays are a vital-component of the radiation coming from energetic events such as solar flares. Two technical advances helped the development of space telescopes. One was the construction of advanced confocal mirror systems and the other was the development of two-dimensional X-ray imaging gas scintillation proportional counters. Using these, the United States launched the first orbiting satellite containing a fully imaging X-ray more...

Today mobile video-recording technology must fit into the palm of the hand, or be integrated into the back of a mobile phone, before anyone would consider paying any money for it. But before the camcorder was invented, anyone wanting to capture moving footage on film had to use an incredibly unwieldy two-part machine. Worse still, the camera itself was all that one person could reasonably carry, so a partner had to be persuaded to carry the video cassette recorder (VCR) alongside. The older equipment also had no playback screen, so whenever it was necessary to watch recently recorded material, a television screen had to be available nearby in which to plug the VCR, The cumbersome equipment was troublesome, particularly for broadcast journalists, movie makers, students, and others working in the field. However, advances in technology and design meant that soon various pioneers of video-recording equipment were shrinking down the basic more...

"What is laid down, ordered ...is never enough... life always spills over the rim of every cup." Boris Pasternak, writer Englishwoman Mandy Haberman was not particularly involved with the business of invention or innovation until the birth of her third child, Emily, in 1980. Emily was born with Stickler syndrome, a genetic disorder that impaired her sucking ability and made feeding difficult. Finding no helpful products available, Haberman applied her talent for problem solving and began to think about a feeder to meet the needs of Emily and other children with sucking difficulties. Ten years later, in 1990 at a friend's house, she was struck by inspiration once again when a toddler spilled blackcurrant juice from a training cup over their cream-colored carpet. Training cups at that time could be closed manually, but Haberman developed a better cup with a unique valve in the mouthpiece that only let out liquid more...

In modern culture, the lightbulb is the symbol we often use to denote a sudden flash of inspiration. It is ironic, then, that the lightbulb itself is not the result of just one exceptional idea, but followed the contributions of many men over several decades. Thomas Edison is often credited with the design for the first practical lightbulb, but he was not responsible for the early developments. Without the input of American chemist Irving Langmuir (1881-1957), the lightbulb as we know it today might not have existed. In the late nineteenth century, Edison filed numerous patents for improvements to electric lighting. His 1880 patent application for an electric lamp certainly depicts what we would immediately recognize as a lightbulb. But it was Langmuir's improvements to the filament at its core that gave us the lightbulb's modern design. Langmuir was a researcher at Edison's General Electric Company, where he was studying more...

The oldest known blast furnaces were built during the Han Dynasty of China in the fourth century B.C.E. Early blast furnace production of cast iron evolved from furnaces used to melt bronze. Iron was essential to military success by the time the State of Qin had unified China (221 B.C.E.). By the eleventh century C.E., the Song Dynasty Chinese iron industry switched from using charcoal to coal for casting iron and steel, saving thousands of acres of woodland. In a blast furnace, fuel and ore are supplied through the top of the furnace, while air is blown into the bottom of the chamber. The chemical reaction takes place as the material moves downward, producing molten metal and slag at the bottom, with flue gases exiting from the top of the furnace. The oldest known blast furnaces in the West were built in Durstel in Switzerland,the Markische Sauerland in Germany, and more...

"In 1854...ltookout a patent for puddling iron by means of steam." James Nasmyth In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, large pieces of metal were made by forging multiple small segments then welding them together into a finished product. Metalworking hammers of the day were capable of forging small items efficiently, but when a large item was placed in them, they had little room to maneuver and therefore little force. This fact became painfully obvious when the Great Western Steamship Company began to build the SS Great Britain. The engineer in charge found it impossible to locate a hammer capable of producing the mammoth paddle wheels that were to propel the ship. Edinburgh-born engineer James Nasmyth (1808-1890) heard about the problem and sketched out a design for a large steam-powered hammer that. would be capable of producing just such a piece of equipment. Nasmyth's hammer consisted of a piston more...

The first step along the path to modern mining began about two and a half million years ago when humans first started using stone tools. Although stones would have been collected from the Earth's surface initially, there is evidence for some form of flint mining as early as one million years ago. Early mining was extremely slow and labor- intensive. Although the discovery of metal and, much later, the introduction of explosives eased the process, the holes for the explosives still had to be made using hammers powered solely by brute force in order to drive a drill into the rock. By the mid-1800s, efforts to develop a mechanical rock. drill had begun in earnest, not only to Increase the efficiency of the mining industry but also to help build tunnels for the first railways. In 1871 Simon Ingersoll (1818-1894) received a patent for his rock drill and, although not more...

"Believe me, you've got to get up pretty early in the morning if you want to get out of bed." Groucho Marx, American comedian and actor In early-twentieth-century San Francisco, William Murphy (1876-1959) found that he had a problem. He wanted to court a young opera singer from a good background, but he lived in a small one-room apartment with a bed taking up most of the floor space. Since it would not be proper to bring a young lady back to his bedroom, he began experimenting with pivoting beds to make his room respectable. He applied for his first patent in 1900 and formed the Murphy Wall Bed Company that year. The company is still in business today, and is the second oldest furniture company in America. In the earliest and most familiar Murphy beds, the bed flips up at the head to be stored in a closet. In more...

The early calculating instrument we know as the abacus—consisting of a wooden frame supporting wires or rods on which wooden beads slide from side to side—was developed in Mesopotamia from a flat, sand-covered, stone counting board on which pebbles were moved. This aid to calculation was in use long before the adoption of the Hindu-Arabic numeral system and can be adapted to any numeral base. The abacus has a huge advantage over counting on the fingers of the hand, simply because it can be used to record very large numbers accurately. The easiest type of abacus to understand is the modern Western version that uses a base often. Here each wire carries ten beads and represents a decadal unit, that is one, ten, 100, 1,000 and so on. A number, say 617,483, can be represented by positioning the respective number of beads, on each wire, against one side of the more...