All Resource articles – Page 81

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On This Day - Mar 21 : Plutonium was named

Plutonium (Pu) took its name from the dwarf planet Pluto. First discovered by Glenn Seaborg and colleagues as a product of nuclear fission, traces of plutonium were later found in a rock formation by Darleane Hoffmann.
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On This Day - Apr 21: Paul Karrer was born

Karrer was awarded half the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1937 for his research into plant pigments, namely yellow carotenoids, flavins, and vitamins A, B2 and E.
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On This Day - May 21 : Bengt Samuelsson was born

He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1982 with Sune Bergström and John Vane for their work on how prostaglandins are formed and metabolised. Prostaglandins are hormone-like substances that participate in a wide range of bodily functions.
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On This Day - Jun 21 : Boron was isolated

The French pair beat the English chemist Humphrey Davy to it by just nine days. Boron (B) is named after one of its compounds, borax, which had been used as a glazing agent for hundreds of years.
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On This Day – Jul 21 : Rudolph Marcus was born

He developed electron transfer theory, which describes the thermodynamics and kinetics of how electrons are transferred between chemicals during a reaction. The theory helps to explain reactions such as oxidation, photosynthesis and cell metabolism.
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On This Day – Aug 21 : Carbon dioxide cloud

The cloud travelled as far as 25 km from the lake and was moving fast enough to flatten vegetation, including trees. The cloud reached the deep, iron-rich waters of the lake causing a dramatic change of colour from blue to red as the iron (Fe) oxidised.
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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

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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.