Science Projects And Inventions

"Any of us who [have walked] away from an automobile accident is likely to have a dummy to thank." JackJensen, General Motors In the fate 1940s, the U.S. Air Force wanted data on how deployment of their newly designed ejection seats would affect the pilots who were strapped into them. For the first time, a crash test dummy was created to obtain the information. This very smart dummy was named "Sierra Sam" and was built in 1949 by American Samuel'- Alderson (1914-2005) in partnership with the Sierra-engineering Co. Prior to the arrival of the crash test dummy, human cadavers were used to guide safety design. Working with corpses was of course highly unpleasant, but also the human bodies were very limited in terms of the information they could convey to researchers. It was also impossible to use them repeatedly to any useful purpose, and although they gave limited information on more...

The simple pulley enables the user to lift a load more easily by changing the direction from which the force is applied. When the rope is fixed at one end and another pulley is added, the system provides a mechanical advantage by multiplying the applied force, making it possible to lift heavy loads. More pulleys can be added to the system, now known as a "compound pulley" system, further multiplying the effectiveness of the force applied. As an indication of the benefit of the system, the addition of a second pulley to a one-pulley lifting mechanism halves the amount of force required to make the lift. A third pulley, properly rigged, reduces the amount of force required to a quarter. In 250 B.C.E., the Greek scientist and.-, .inventor Archimedes (c. 287-212 B.C.E.) adopted this principle by mounting several pulleys on the same axle to create a "block" that was much more...

"Slebe's design... remained In use essentially unchanged by the Royal Navy until]989." English Heritage The standard diving suit, or "hard-hat" diving suit, was a major advance in diving technology. Early diving suits were crude and inflexible and imposed major restrictions on divers' movements, such as an inability to invert. A brilliant German inventor by the name of Augustus Siebe (1788-1872) changed all that with his innovative "closed" helmet suit—a design that remained essentially unchanged until fiberglass SCUBA suits arrived in the 1960s. After learning metal craft and working as a watchmaker, and following service as an artillery officer in the Prussian army at the Battle of Waterloo, Siebe moved to England in 1815. While living in London he stumbled across the solution to creating a more practical diving suit. Previous designs—so- called "open dress" suits—were simple diving bells that trapped air for breathing, but these took in water when the more...

In the early 1940s plastics were still relatively new compounds and their practical applications had not yet been fully realized. Early plastics were brittle, greasy, and had a rather unpleasant odor. It would take an ex-tree surgeon by the name of Earl Tupper (1907-1983) to come up with the perfect plastic. Tupper worked at the chemical company DuPont, where he learned about the design and manufacture of plastics. In 1938 he founded the Earl S. Tupper Company, which manufactured parts for gas masks during World War II. After the war, he turned his attention toward creating a peacetime product. Tupper discovered a way of turning polyethylene slag—a by-product of crude oil refinement—into a strong, resilient, grease-free plastic that he called Tupperware®. By 1946 Tupperware® was on the market in an array of brightly colored incarnations: cigarette cases, water tumblers, and food storage containers. In 1947 he patented the Tupperware® seal, more...

Needle and pill phobia sufferers must have cheered when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first transdermal patch in 1979. This new mode of drug delivery promised all the benefits of shots and pills but with no downside. Patient comfort was not the reason biochemist Alejandro Zaffaroni (b. 1923) developed transdermal patches. Zaffaroni wanted to mimic the body's timed release of hormones and thought available drug delivery methods were not sophisticated enough. In 1969 he started his company, ALZA, and by 1971 had been awarded a U.S. patent for a "bandage for administering drugs." Big pharmaceutical companies thought the patch was the path to nowhere. "I thought the industry would look at what we were doing and say, 'Gee, it makes a good deal of sense. But they didn't,'" said Zaffaroni in an interview. The pharmaceutical industry, however, soon realized that Zaffaroni's patches made good sense and more...

"[It was on this day] I suddenly knew how to make a one-step dry photographic process." Edwin Land The "Polaroid" camera became an instant classic following its conception, more than sixty years ago. Although the technology behind self-developing film was already present at the time, it was Edwin Land (1909-1991), founder of the Polaroid Corporation, who designed and produced the first commercially available self-developing camera in 1946, an invention that won its creator many accolades. Land formed his company in 1937 to produce and sell the polarizing filters he had patented eight years before, and soon the company was making filters for the United States in World War II. Land was on vacation with his daughter in 1943 when, after snapping a photo of her, she asked why she had to wait so long to see the image. He soon visualized a system of "one step dry photography," whereby the more...

"A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why Chippendale is famous." Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, architect Chairs have been invented that swing, swivel, rock, roll, recline, fold, massage, and even electrocute. Before all of those, however, came the invention of the chair in its simplest form, about 4,800 years ago. More than a thousand years before that, man had invented a way of resting in a sitting position off the floor, on the simple backless seats known as stools. Stools were raised to an art form by the ancient Egyptians. Beside creating beautiful and ornate stools, the Egyptian craftsmen also focused on function by fabricating stools that folded. Some examples have floor rails and crossing spindles with carved goose heads inlaid with ivory to resemble feathers and eyes. In the Third Dynasty (2650-2575 B.C.E.), Egyptians were also to give stools their greatest more...

When Christopher Columbus arrived in the Americas in 1492 he was struck by the locals' indulgence in an unfamiliar habit. The Mayans had been smoking dried tobacco leaves since the first century B.C.E., and by the time the Spanish sailors discovered the New World the custom had spread throughout the continent. Possibly thinking their foreign visitors divine, the indigenous Arawaks offered Columbus and his men some of the leaves—who immediately threw them away. One member of the crew, Rodrigo de Jerez, was not as skeptical, though, and very soon he also "drank" the dried tobacco leaves wrapped in palm or maize, thus becoming the first European smoker. Back home, his newly acquired habit frightened his compatriots so much that the Inquisition put him in jail. Over the next few centuries the practice gradually spread all over the world, but to a mixed reception. Initially European doctors praised its medicinal properties—the more...

'"Australian antigen' was the Rosetta stone for unraveling the nature of the hepatitis viruses." Robert H. Purcell, National Institute of Health There are few people who can be said to have saved the lives of millions, but American scientist Dr. Baruch Blumberg (b. 1925) is one of them. In the 1960s he and his colleagues were screening aboriginal blood for diseases when they found a rare protein. They named it the "Australian antigen" and investigated whether it also occurred elsewhere in the world. It turned out to be uncommon in Americans but much more prevalent in Asians, Africans, and some Europeans. They discovered it-was also found in leukemia sufferers who were receiving regular blood transfusions. Further population studies pointed to the antigen being part of a relatively unknown virus that caused a particularly virulent form of hepatitis—hepatitis B. Hepatitis B is a serious disease that attacks the liver causing cirrhosis more...

The discovery of the properties of ether as an anesthetic was one of the major breakthroughs for the medical profession. Until then, patients undergoing surgery had to rely on hypnotism or alcohol. American Crawford Long (1815-1878) is reputed to have first discovered the effects of ether when attending "laughing gas" parties and "ether frolics" during his years at medical school. There he noticed that those under the influence of nitrous oxide (laughing gas) or ether were unaware of pain through knocks and falls, until the effect had worn off. Long established his rural practice in Jefferson, Georgia, and began to experiment with sulfuric ether as an anesthetic. The first procedure in which he used ether was an operation on March 30,1842, to remove a tumor from a young man's neck; after the surgery the patient could not believe that it had been done. Long then began to use ether for more...