Science Projects And Inventions

Sir Joseph Whitworth (1803-1887) had a life long desire to improve on existing technology. By the time of his death, his interests and efforts had amassed him assets worth more than £150 million.($300 million) in today's money and a large manufacturing complex in Manchester, England. En route, Whitworth had produced pretty much everything from road-sweeping machinery to firearms. Moreover, by absorbing the ideas and philosophies to which he was exposed while working at the renowned Henry Maudslay works at Lambeth Marsh, London, and rejecting the often shoddy standards of the day, this perfectionist had established himself as the father of precision engineering. One Whitworth contribution to the modern world that underpinned so many others, and one that would keep his name on the lips of mechanics and engineers alike for many years, was the Whitworth Thread, which he proposed in 1841. Known subsequently as the British Standard Whitworth (BSW) Thread, more...

"On the whole coast of America there is not another alarm equal to the one spoken of...” Captain Winchester, SS Eastern City, 1860 Before the invention of the foghorn by Scottish-born inventor, civil engineer, and artist Robert Foulis (1796- 1866), harbor towns relied on cannons or bells to guide ships into port in foggy conditions. One such harbor town, Saint John in New Brunswick, Canada, welcomed a new civil engineer when Foulis settled there in 1825. It is likely that Foulis witnessed the 1832 installation of a "warning bell" at Partridge Island, just over half a mile (0.8 km) from Saint John. Partridge Island's new bell, a behemoth at 0.5 tons, helped to bring ships into port, but the need for louder warnings, along with the limitations of bell construction, had mariners crying out for an alternative. Foulis's 1852 offering was a steam-powered automated foghorn with a deep warning sound. more...

"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power [with] guided missiles and misguided men." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1962 the United States Air Force (USAF) began research into developing a laser-guided weapon that could be used to target stationary targets accurately. During World War II, unguided bombs dropped by aircraft caused immense damage, but many bombs were often required to hit one target successfully. From a military perspective the risk to bomber pilots from antiaircraft fire had been great, and there had been a terrible toll of deaths and injuries among civilians at some distance from the actual targets. By 1967 the USAF had produced the first laser- guided bomb, the BOLT-117, and were able to use it during the Vietnam War the following year. This breakthrough in ordnance capability turned unguided, "dumb" bombs (which simply fall to the ground) into precision guided, "smart" bombs. Laser-guided bombs rely more...

"After months of frustration, we had grown used to seeing blobs of resin caked on the mold..." Nathaniel Wyeth The humble plastic bottle is now one of the most commonly recycled household objects. But it was the product's cheapness and durability that led to its popularity over glass bottles. Nathaniel Wyeth (1911- 1990), a U.S. engineer, worked on the invention for almost a decade. When he asked a colleague if plastic could be used to store carbonated beverages such as Coca Cola, he was told that they would explode. A series of early experiments proved that carbonated beverages caused the plastic to expand. Obviously, the plastic was too weak, but the plastic could be strengthened if the long strands of molecules that form plastic were woven together. Wyeth knew that nylon gets stronger when its molecules are stretched and aligned, and developed a pre-formed mold that forced the nylon threads more...

"Sunglow, unmellow yellow, atomic tangerine, purple pizzazz, razzle dazzle rose, neon carrot...” Names of crayon colors added to the 1990 box They have brought color and creativity to generations of children across the world, but the crayon family began with just one color, black. Originally based on a mixture of charcoal and oil, the oil was soon replaced with wax to make the crayon stronger and easier to hold. American cousins Edwin Binney (1866-1934) and Harold Smith (1860-1931) had a company that sold paint pigments—red for painting barns and black for car tires. In 1900 they began to make pencils and came up with the useful idea of dustless chalk for teachers. While touring schools with these products, the cousins spotted a gap in the market for a new drawing and writing implement. They set about making a safe, nontoxic toy for children and, in 1903, the first box of more...

In 1908 physicists Hans Geiger (1882-1945) and Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) were observing ionized helium atoms at Manchester University and wanted to confirm the data from their scintillation crystal counters. Their new "Geiger" counter consisted of a high-voltage wire running along the central axis of a sealed brass cylindrical tube containing low-pressure carbon dioxide. When charged particles entered through a window in the chamber they collided with and ionized CO2 molecules leading to a voltage change on the central wire that was registered on a galvanometer. A count rate of five to ten per minute could be registered. Soon more sophisticated detectors using helium gas and a photographic voltage registration were introduced, increasing the count rate to about a thousand per minute. In 1928 improvements made in the electrical characteristics by Walther Muller (one of Geiger's PhD students) enabled the instrument to detect electrons. The main problem was the recovery time—the more...

"While fancy, like the finger of a clock, runs the great circuit, and is still at home." William Cowper,"The Winter Evening"(1785) Around 1602 Galileo Galilei noticed that the swing period of a pendulum was nearly independent of the amplitude of the oscillation, and this became the most important discovery in the history of horology. In 1656 Dutch mathematician and astronomer Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) was the first to use a pendulum as a regulating oscillator in a clock. The swing period of a pendulum is only a function of its length and the local gravitational field, unlike the verge and balance (foliot) oscillator, which it replaced, which had an oscillation period that depended on the force exerted by the driving spring. Within years of Huygens's discovery weight-driven pendulum clocks were appearing all over Europe. To provide a sufficient distance for the weights to fall, and to accommodate a reasonably long pendulum—a more...

"[Engine control] requires an intelligent man, an honest man, a sober man, a steady man..." Isambard Kingdom Brunei, engineer The steam in early steam engines was used only once; after it had pushed back the piston it was discharged into the atmosphere, A more efficient process allowed the steam to expand in two or more stages. These "compound" engines had two or more cylinders. After the steam had been expanded in the high-pressure cylinder the exhaust steam was then used to push back the piston of a following, larger-circumference, low-pressure cylinder. The two pistons were connected with cranks that enabled them to work at the required different phases. With correct size scaling, the power output per cylinder could be equalized, and the engine ran smoothly. As these systems were rather complicated, theywere mainly used in industrial and marine engines. Some compound railway locomotives were built, but the tough operating conditions more...

“I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferns wheel.” E.B. White, writer How do you outdo the Eiffel Tower? This was the problem facing the organizers of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. The solution was presented by George Ferris (1859-1896), who submitted details right down to ticket prices. Ferris was a civil engineer with an interest in railroads and bridge building. His design was for a wheel, 262 feet (80 m) tall, capable of carrying 2,000 people up for a view of the whole fair. Smaller, wooden "pleasure wheels" had already appeared around the world, but this design was on a much grander scale. However, the fair organizers thought it could not be done and rejected Ferris. Not a man to be easily deterred, he returned after convincing fellow engineers to endorse the design and local investors to cover the $400,000 cost. This time more...

Thermostats control the temperature of a system—such as an oven, car engine, or room—so that it remains close to a preset value. The control is achieved by means of a temperature-sensitive switch that operates heating or cooling devices. Many of these switches are activated by monitoring the expansion of metals, waxes, or gases. More recently, thermostatic devices have relied on thermistors in electrical circuits. The thermistor is usually a ceramic or polymer electrical resistance that changes its value significantly as a function of temperature. Thermistors were patented by Samuel Ruben in 1930. Dr. Andrew Ure (1778-1857) was a Scottish medic and chemist who was also greatly interested in the factory system, free trade, and steam-driven machines. Realizing that textile mills needed constant temperatures to ensure uniformity in product manufacture, Ure patented a thermostat for this purpose. This was not an entirely new device. The Dutchman Cornelis Drebbel (1572-1633) had used more...