All Resource articles – Page 81

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    On This Day – Sep 21 : Loius Cailletet born

    He was one of the first people to investigate the role of heat in phase changes. He successfully liquefied several gases, including oxygen (O) and hydrogen (H), and installed a 300 m high pressure gauge on the Eiffel Tower!

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    On This Day - Oct 21 : William Mitchell was born

    He invented food products such as Pop Rocks, instant Jell-O, Cool Whip and the orange drink, Tang. Whilst working for the General Foods Corporation, he received over 70 patents for his food product inventions.

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    On This Day - Nov 21 : Hieronymus Richter was born

    He was the co-discoverer of indium (In), an element used to form transparent electrodes in liquid crystal displays in computers, televisions and touch screens.

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    On This Day - Dec 21 : Thomas Graham was born

    He is known as “the father of colloid chemistry” and was the founding president of the Chemical Society, which is now the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). The RSC’s Cambridge office, Thomas Graham House, is named after him.

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    On This Day - Mar 22 : Robert Millikan was born

    Famous for using oil droplets to measure the charge of an electron for the first time, Millikan went on to experimentally investigate the photoelectric effect corroborating Einstein’s theories. Millikan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1923 for this work.

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    On This Day – Jul 22 : Selman Waksman was born

    He coined the term ‘antibiotic’ and discovered streptomycin, the first drug that was effective against tuberculosis. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1952 for this work.

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    On This Day - Oct 22 : Xerography was performed

    Xerography is a dry photocopying technique that is now used in photocopiers and laser printers. It was invented by Chester F. Carlson but the original process was cumbersome, requiring several manual processing steps. It took almost 18 years to become a fully automated process.

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    On This Day - Nov 22 : Louis Néel was born

    2012-09-27T13:12:00Z

    He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1970 for his work on the magnetic properties of solids. Néel provided an explanation of the weak magnetism of certain rocks, which then made it possible to study the history of the Earth’s magnetic field.

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    On This Day - Dec 22 : Liquid oxygen was made

    The experiment was notified to the Academy of Sciences in Paris in a telegram from Pictet in Geneva: “Oxygen liquefied to-day under 320 atmospheres and 140 degrees of cold by combined use of sulfurous and carbonic acid”.

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    On This Day - Apr 23 : Max Planck was born

    Max Planck was the founder of quantum theory. He came up with the equation E = hν, which related the frequency of light emitted by a body to its energy.

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    On This Day - May 23 : John Bardeen was born

    He co-invented the transistor, a device that can switch and modulate electrical current. Transistors have transformed the world of electronics, and have allowed us to build smaller and lighter computers.

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    On This Day - Jun 23 : Etienne-Louis Malus born

    He discovered that light waves could be polarised (made to vibrate in a single plane) by reflecting them off a non-metallic surface. This phenomenon is responsible for the ‘glare’ seen when light shines on glass or water.

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    On This Day – Sep 23 : Richard Zsigmondy died

    He was awarded the 1925 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research into colloids, which are substances microscopically dispersed throughout another substance. Examples include foams (gas dispersed through liquid), aerosols (liquid through gas) and emulsions (liquid through liquid).

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    On This Day - Dec 23 : Axel Cronstedt was born

    He discovered the element nickel (Ni) in 1751, describing the metal as “kupfernickel” – the Devil’s copper (Cu). He is one of the founders of modern mineralogy and developed a procedure involving the use of blowpipes for analysing the composition of minerals.

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    On This Day - Feb 24 : Nylon commercially produced

    Nylon was first used in toothbrush bristles for the Miracle Tuft Toothbrush. Before this, the world relied on toothbrush bristles made from the neck hairs of wild pigs from Siberia, Poland and China.

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    On This Day - Apr 24 : Roger Kornberg was born

    He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2006 for his “studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription” – the process where genetic information is copied from DNA to RNA.

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    On This Day - May 24 : Daniel Fahrenheit was born

    He invented the alcohol thermometer (1709) and mercury thermometer (1714). He also developed the Fahrenheit temperature scale by reference to three fixed points of temperature, where a mixture of ice, water and ammonium chloride was taken as 0 °F.

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    On This Day - Jun 24 : Johannes Wislicenus born

    He is best known for his work on stereochemistry. He coined the term ‘geometric isomerism’ in the early 1870s when he discovered two substances that had an identical chemical structure but different physical properties.

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    On This Day – Jul 24 : Sir James Chadwick died

    He received the Nobel Prize in Physics 1935 for his discovery of the neutron, a subatomic particle with zero electrical charge. Neutrons are found in the nucleus of all elements (except hydrogen) along with protons, which carry a positive charge.

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    On This Day – Aug 24 : Ray McIntire was born

    He invented foam polystyrene, or Styrofoam. McIntire had been trying to develop a flexible electrical insulator for coating wires. Polystyrene, although a good insulator, was too brittle. He thought he could soften it by adding isobutylene under pressure, but instead made the light foamy substance.