All Resource articles – Page 78

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On This Day - Oct 17 : First nuclear power plant

The Calder Hall nuclear power plant in northwest England became the first nuclear power plant to supply commercial amounts of electricity to a public grid. Sellafield nuclear power station now stands on the same site.
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On This Day - Dec 17 : Willard Libby was born

He developed radiocarbon dating and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1960 “for his method to use carbon-14 for age determination in archaeology, geology, geophysics, and other branches of science”.
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On This Day - Mar 16 : First liquid fuelled rocket

With a flight time of only 2.5 seconds and reaching a height of 12 metres, the demonstration by American physicist Robert H. Goddard was revolutionary at the time, leading to a new field of rocket propulsion.
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On This Day - Apr 16 : LSD effects discovered

Swiss scientist Albert Hofmann was the first to synthesise, taste and hence learn of the psychedelic effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD).
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On This Day - May 16 : Nicolas-Louis Vauquelin was born

Vauquelin discovered the elements chromium (Cr) and beryllium (Be). Chromium is a hard, silvery metal used to make stainless steel. Beryllium is used in gears and cogs, particularly in aeroplanes.
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On This Day – Aug 16 : Robert Bunsen died

He famously developed the Bunsen burner, which was an improvement on the laboratory burners in use at the time and is still widely used today. He also investigated emission spectra of heated elements, and co-discovered the elements caesium (Cs) and rubidium (Rb).
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On This Day - Oct 16 : Ether as anaesthetic

After learning that inhaling ether causes unconsciousness, the American dentist William T. G. Morton experimented with it while extracting a tooth from a Boston merchant. Following this success, ether was used as an anaesthetic across the world.
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On This Day - Nov 16 : Americium discovered

This element is named after the Americas. Americium can be produced from intense neutron irradiation of pure plutonium (Pu). It is used in smoke detectors and as a portable source for gamma radiography.
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On This Day - Dec 16 : Johann Ritter was born

He established an explicit connection between galvanism and chemical reactivity. He was the first person to electrolyse water and is among the founders of electrochemistry.
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On This Day - Mar 15 : Nevil Sidgwick died

He contributed to the valence theory of chemical bonding by explaining the role of valency in covalent bonding, and demonstrated the existence and importance of the hydrogen (H) bond.
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On This Day - Apr 15 : de Marignac died

He was one of the first to suggest the existence of isotopes. He also discovered the element ytterbium (Yb) and co-discovered gadolinium (Gd). Related resources: Gadolinium - Element information Gadolinium podcast Ytterbium - Element information Ytterbium podcast
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On This Day - May 15 : Pierre Curie was born

Pierre Curie co-discovered polonium (Po) and radium (Ra) with his wife Marie Curie. He was also a pioneer in crystallography, magnetism and radioactivity.
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On This Day – Jul 15 : Albert Ghiorso was born

He co-discovered 12 elements while working at the University of California, Berkeley: americium (Am), curium (Cm), berkelium (Bk), californium (Cf), einsteinium (Es), fermium (Fm), mendelevium (Md), nobelium (No), lawrencium (Lr), rutherfordium (Rf), dubnium (Db) and seaborgium (Sg).
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On This Day – Sep 15 : Neil Bartlett was born

He was the first person to produce a compound containing a noble gas. Until Bartlett created xenon (Xe) hexafluoroplatinate in 1962, most scientists believed that the noble gases were too unreactive to form compounds. The discovery opened up a whole new area of study in inorganic chemistry.
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On This Day - Oct 15 : First contraceptive pill

The pill was a steroid hormone, norethindrone, developed by Carl Djerassi and co-workers at Syntex in Mexico City. Around 100 million women worldwide now take contraceptive pills, which are approximately 99% effective against pregnancy.
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On This Day - Dec 15 : Becquerel was born

He discovered radioactivity from uranium (U) salts and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 along with Pierre and Marie Curie.
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On This Day - Mar 14 : George Eastman died

He invented rolled film and created the Eastman Kodak company. Rolled film made photography accessible to everyone and helped found the motion picture industry.
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On This Day - Apr 14 : Nuclear batteries used

NASA’s Nimbus III weather satellite first made use of nuclear batteries, which use emissions from a radioactive isotope to generate electricity. Compared to other batteries they are very expensive, but have a very long life and produce lots of energy for their size.
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On This Day - May 14 : First smallpox vaccination

The English doctor inserted pus from a cowpox pustule into an incision on the arm of eight-year old James Phipps. From then on Phipps was immune to smallpox, one of the most virulent killer diseases of the time.
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On This Day - Jun 14 : Alois Alzheimer was born

He is recognised for identifying the first published cases of a progressive, degenerative brain disease that was eventually named after him. Today there are over 25 million sufferers of Alzheimer’s worldwide, but no known cure.