Science Projects And Inventions

Egyptian tomb paintings from around 1420 B.C.E. depict a ship fitted with steering oars on either side of the stern and are thought to be the earliest evidence of the use of the rudder principle, by which water flowing past the boat's hull is redirected. The same technique was long used on Mediterranean cargo ships, but the Vikings preferred a single oar, mounted to the starboard side of the stern of their longboats. The oar could be easily lifted in shallow water but was not always effective in heavy seas, when it could be raised out of the water by the waves. A rudder is most efficient when mounted along the vessel's centerline, and in accordance with this Chinese vessels have been designed with hinged rudders on the stern since the first century B.C.E. There is no evidence of such a practice in Europe until some eleven centuries later, and more...

Today, when nearly every device is available in a portable, pocket-sized version, it is hard to imagine a time when a simple, handheld calculator was the stuff of science fiction. In the early 1960s, calculators were the size of modern-day desktop computers but not nearly as powerful. Personal calculators were nonexistent, and workplace desktop calculators were limited to four simple arithmetic functions. In the workplace, complex math was left to humans. In 1965, mathematicians and engineers at Texas Instruments (Tl) set to work shrinking calculators, using integrated circuit technology that had been invented in-house. By 1967, they had a battery- powered prototype capable of the four simple arithmetic functions on six-digit numbers. Dubbed "Cal-Tech," the calculator was the size of a large paperback book—4.25 x 6.15 x 1.75 inches (11 x 16 x 4cm)—and weighed nearly 3 pounds (1.3 kg)—hardly a "pocket calculator" and not commercially available or viable. Tl more...

The need for drinking water is as old as life on earth. For much of human evolution, springs, streams, rivers, and lakes provided a ready source of water, and early towns and cities eventually grew up around such important supplies. But as towns and cities got bigger, the difficulty of ensuring a dean supply increased because of greater pollution and more thirsty mouths to sate. Methods of purifying water have been around for centuries. Sand filtration was first described as a means to remove impurities in the seventeenth century and used a method borrowed from nature. The technique was adopted by individuals, but not set up as a municipal service until 1804. In that year, civil engineer Robert Thorn (1774- 1847) created the first water treatment plant in Paisley,- Scotland. The water was slowly filtered through sand and gravel before being transported by horse and cart. Three years later, this more...

The need to moor ships and boats is as old as the vessels themselves. The ancient world—Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome—used whatever came to hand for the task, from a basketful of stones to a sackful of sand, lowered by rope. Single large stones with a rope-hole became common. Use of metal crept in gradually during classical times, as ships increased in size and varied anchor designs were developed for different situations and vessel types. In 500 B.C.E., bronze anchors were cast in Malta. Some crude wooden anchors had pieces of lead or other heavy metals added for weight, while a popular wooden hook design gradually became fashioned entirely in iron instead. Iron anchors have been recovered from Roman merchant vessels. Soon the classic form developed. This featured flukes (the pointed ends of arms at the anchor base) and a stock (a horizontal bar that upends the anchor to ensure more...

Although computers were in use long before the 1970s, they were incredibly difficult to operate. Early computers had barely enough processing power to Solve the problems they were given. Further, nobody had taken time to look into how the computers were given the problems: their user interface. The first big inroads were made at Xerox's legendary Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). PARC's "Alto" computers drew on earlier innovations like Doug Engelbart's computer mouse of 1968. The Alto was the very first computer where a click with a mouse on a file would open it. It also had the earliest "what you see is what you get" word processor, showing documents on its screen just as they would look if printed out. Adding menus and icons to allow the user to make choices easily, and putting programs in different windows on the screen, PARC developed the first graphical user interface. Suddenly, more...

"Inside a big cardboard box, a child is transported to a world of his or her own." National Toy Hall of Fame The cardboard box is one of the most widely used methods of packaging and storing goods. Although in the last few decades its use has been threatened by new materials, the current environmental climate has seen a move back toward card as a sustainable material that can be recycled. Before the invention of the cardboard box, the most common packing material for goods was wood, which was heavy and expensive, and unsuitable for small or light goods. In 1817 Sir Malcolm Thornhill produced the first commercial cardboard box. His invention gained in popularity, but it was not until the Kellogg brothers used it to package their cereals after the turn of the century, that the product truly took off. As card can be printed on, manufacturers recognized the more...

"... maybe people should be able to have their statin...with their drinking water." Dr. John Reckless, consultant endocrinologist With the knowledge that high cholesterol (blood fat) increases a person's risk of suffering a heart attack (or stroke), the quest was on to discover drugs that could be used to lower cholesterol. In 1959 scientists working at the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg, Germany, identified the HMG-CoA reductase enzyme as a major contributor to production of internal cholesterol. The  discovery  inspired  scientists worldwide to start searching for drugs to inhibit the enzyme and thereby reduce levels of cholesterol. By 1976 Japanese researcher Akira Endo, from Sankyo, isolated the first inhibitor (Compactin, ML- 236B) of HMG-CoA reductase enzyme from the fungus Penicillium citrinium. Endo had chosen to begin his search in molds and fungi for the sole reason that this was his own particular area of expertise. In 1979 Carl Hoffman and more...

The humble rivet may be small, but is has a lot to answer for—including, quite possibly, the sinking of the Titanic. Rivets have been in widespread use for thousands of years but, because engineers now depend on them to secure boats, bridges, aircraft, and other more complex constructions, their reliability has become paramount. Rivet holes have been found in Egyptian spearheads dating back to the Naqada culture of between 4400 and 3000 B.C.E. Archeologists have also uncovered many Bronze Age swords and daggers with rivet holes where the handles would have been. The rivets themselves were essentially short rods of metal, which metalworkers hammered into a pre-drilled hole on one side and deformed on the other to hold them in place. Today, a wide variety of rivets exist, as do specialized tools for installing them. The extensive use of rivets in modern engineering and architecture has, inevitably, increased the likelihood more...

Ultraviolet (UV) light is found beyond the violet end of our visible spectrum of light, toward the X-rays. It is given off by the sun and is harmful to living things, which is why we need to wear sunscreen when we go out in the sun. Fortunately for us, most of it is absorbed by Earth's atmosphere. Ultraviolet light from places other than the sun can tell us a great deal about the universe—specifically about stars that are between twice and ten times the temperature of the sun. Because Earth's atmosphere gets in the way, astronomers find it hard to see them. By the mid-1960s, however, humans were journeying beyond Earth's atmosphere... Normal cameras pick up only light around the visible spectrum, but on November 11, 1969, astrophysicist Dr. George Carruthers [b. 1939) was granted a patent for an "Image converter for detecting electromagnetic radiation especially in short wave lengths." more...

In 1979, American Terry Miller showed that it was possible for a car to run on compressed air alone. After developing his Air Car One, which he built for $1,500, Miller patented his method in 1983. Instead of burning fuel to drive pistons with hot expanding gas, air cars used the expansion of compressed air to drive the pistons. Initially energy is involved in compressing the air, and this is usually done with electricity, but it is still a more environmentally friendly process than that of gasoline cars. Many companies are developing air cars, though they are yet to be released for the public; this is likely to happen in the very near future. There are a few drawbacks that the air car must overcome before it hits the market big time. When air expands from its compressed state, the engine is cooled and this can encourage icing. Also, in more...