Science Projects And Inventions

"A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit, and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?" Albert Einstein In 2006 Microsoft announced a new way in which a human can interact with a computer. The mouse and keyboard are thrown away and replaced with a tabletop containing an embedded rear-projection touch screen. Behind the screen, inside the table, are five cameras with overlapping fields of view. These can look through the screen and be programmed to recognize or read items that are placed on the screen. These cameras can also recognize physical objects, track hand gestures and the movement of pens and brushes, and read credit cards and "loyalty" cards. The software supports a multitude of touch points so many people can use the computer at once. A single user can also multitask. For example, if a digital camera is placed on the computer table, the more...

"Zillah bore Tubal-Cain; he was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron." Genesis 4:22 Metallurgy is one of the most ancient fields of technology and also one of the most important. The use of metals has been so essential to humankind that long periods of history—the Bronze Age and the Iron Age—have been named after the metals that were used most predominantly in those times. Being able to join pieces of metal together has always been essential in making metal artifacts. The joining can be done in a number of different ways, including welding, brazing, and soldering. Metal items to be joined by welding must themselves be partly melted before the joining can take place. Brazing or soldering—which are sometimes called "hard" and "soft" soldering respectively, with brazing carried out at a higher temperature—are processes whereby pieces of metal are joined together by the introduction of a metal more...

"A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with." Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) A vacuum is an empty space containing nothing, not even air. Anything containing a vacuum has a much lower pressure on its inside than its outside, and this creates a tremendous force. Otto von Guericke (1602- 1686), a German scientist, was the first to experiment with the power of the vacuum. In his experiments, he filled containers with water and then used a suction pump to remove the water while trying to avoid letting in any air. Wood was useless for this as it leaked air, so he used glass or metal containers. To minimize air intake, Guericke put his container in another layer of water as it was easier to stop water leakage than air leakage. The inward pressure on the more...

Velcro is the brand name for a lightweight, durable, and washable fastening, widely used instead of zips in clothing and luggage. It consists of two strips of nylon fabric, one densely covered in small, strong hooks and the other containing small loops. When pressed together, the two strips form a strong bond that can be peeled apart again, making a characteristic ripping noise, but will not open if pulled in any other direction. Swiss engineer George de Mestral (1907-1990) had The idea for Velcro in 1941 after getting his microscope out to Study the burrs stuck to his dog's fur and his own clothing, following a hike in the Alps. Burrs— seedheads of the burdock plant—have lots of strong little hooks that fix onto passing animals (and walkers) and stay tenaciously attached until the animal cleans them off, usually depositing them some distance from the parent plant. De Mestral saw more...

The process for fixing nitrogen from ammonia into nitric acid was a key development in the industrial production of fertilizers and explosives. It was patented in 1902 by Russian-German chemist Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932). One of the founders of the field of physical chemistry, Ostwald received the 1909 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on catalysis, chemical equilibria, and reaction velocities. His process remains fundamental to the modern chemical industry. During the Ostwald Process, ammonia is heated in the presence of a platinum-rhodium catalyst to form nitric oxide, which is then oxidized to yield nitrogen dioxide, which in turn reacts with water to produce nitric acid and nitric oxide. Ostwald's major breakthrough was his .discovery that the length of time the reactants are in contact with the catalyst affects the yield of the ''reaction. Leave them there too long, and the nitric acid degrades back into nitrogen. Ostwald passed the more...

In 1938, Howard Florey (1898-1968) and Ernst Chain (1906-1979), two pathologists working at the University of Oxford, read a paper published nine years earlier about a substance called penicillin. Its author, Alexander Fleming, recounted how spores of the mold Penicillium notatum had entered his bacterial culture dishes and killed some of the bacteria. Florey and Chain recognized the significance of Fleming's observation and obtained a culture of the original mold. Initially they encountered difficulties in obtaining enough penicillin, but Norman Heatley (1911-2004), a biochemist on the team, devised ways of isolating penicillin without destroying it. Monitoring the extracted penicillin on mice infected with bacteria, they found animals treated with penicillin survived, while untreated animals died. With World War II now underway, the group recognized penicillin's enormous potential to treat war wounds. In 1941 Heatley traveled to the United States to start the commercial production of penicillin. Working with a team more...

In the fifteenth century Korea was a drought-plagued realm, and King Sejong (1397-1450) wished to levy land taxes based on an assessment of each farmer's potential harvest. To this end a nationwide network of rain gauges was established and the local magistrates of every village were commanded to report the rainfall to the central government. In 1441 each village was provided with a standard cylindrical container, 17 inches (43 cm) high and 7 inches (17 cm) wide, that was mounted on a stone stand; a special ruler was used to measure the depth of rainwater that entered the gauge over a specific time. Its inventor was a civil-servant scientist, Jang Yeong-Sil. Needless to say, the method of rain measurement was rather labor-intensive. The Chinese, meanwhile, had used a similar technique to measure snowfall in 1247C.E. In 1662 Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723) invented the "pluviometer," a mechanical, self-emptying, tipping-bucket rain gauge. more...

"No other symbol so strongly identifies the doctor than a stethoscope." Ariel Rogun, MD, PhD Although physician Rene Laennec (1781-1826) is credited with inventing the stethoscope, doctors in ancient Greece had practiced the art of auscultation, or listening. The Frenchman's flash of inspiration came in 1816 when he was confronted by a plump, young female patient with a heart condition. Overcome by embarrassment at the thought of having to press his ear to her ample bosom, Laennec recalled having seen children tapping a log while listening at the far end. This inspired him to roll up a sheath of papers into a cylinder and apply it to her chest, with the result that he could clearly hear her heartbeat. From this idea Laennec developed the first true stethoscope, which consisted of a hollow wooden tube around 9 inches (22 cm) long and 1 inch (2.5 cm) in diameter, known as a more...

The jointed prosthetic limb originated in the 1500s and steadily improved in the next five centuries. Credit for the invention goes to Ambroise Pare (circa 1510-1590), a French barber-surgeon better known for some of his earlier achievements. For example, during the siege of Turin (1536-37) he realized that gunshot wounds were not poisonous and did not need to be cauterized with boiling oil. In his book of 1545, La Method de traicter les playes faites par les arquebuses et aultres bastons a feu (The Method of Treating Wounds Made by Arquebuses and Other Guns), Pare recommended simple dressings and ointments. The Frenchman also promoted the tying off of blood vessels to prevent hemorrhage during surgery (ligaturation), which had been practiced for more than a thousand years but had fallen into disuse. Pare then invented a prosthetic limb for above- the-knee amputees, to be fitted to the thigh. It incorporated a more...

"Sherlock Holmes took his... hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case."   Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of The Four (1890) In 1853 the first practical hypodermic syringe, capable of penetrating the skin without the need for a prior         incision, was developed simultaneously by the French surgeon Charles Gabriel Pravaz (1791-1853) working in Lyon, France, and Scottish physician Alexander Wood (1817-1884). Pravaz's silver syringe included a piston with a screw adjustment to measure the administration of precise doses of blood-coagulating agents in treating aneurysms. Wood used a glass syringe that allowed him to monitor visually the injection of morphine in his treatment of patients with neuralgic disorders: Wood later added a graduated scale for more precise measurements. The syringe permitted for the first time the intravenous administration of anesthesia and helped eliminate many of the difficulties faced in the still experimental realm of blood transfusions. more...