All Resource articles – Page 84

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On This Day - Jan 06 : Anselme Payen was born

He is known for discovering the first enzyme diastase, and the carbohydrate cellulose, which is the most abundant organic compound on Earth. He also developed a process to industrially synthesise borax from boric acid that broke the Dutch monopoly on mined borax.
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On This Day - Feb 06 : Discovery of germanium

Germanium (Ge) is a silvery semi-metal element used in semiconductors. It is used as a transistor in thousands of types of electronics.
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On This Day - Jan 07: Patent for thermal cracking

This process involves breaking down large hydrocarbon molecules into smaller ones, which increases the amount of gasoline that refineries can produce from a barrel of crude oil.
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On This Day - Jan 08 : Melvin Calvin died

He was awarded the 1961 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of the Calvin cycle. The Calvin cycle is a series of reactions that describe carbon (C) fixing in plants. Related resources: Photosynthesis Carbon - Element information
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On This Day - Feb 08 : Moses Gomberg was born

He discovered the first stable free radical triphenylmethyl during attempts to prepare the even more sterically hindered hydrocarbon hexaphenylethane. He was since known as the founder of radical chemistry.
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On This Day - Jan 09 : Søren Sørensen was born

He developed the pH scale (which ranges from 0-14) at the Carlsberg Laboratory in Denmark. This was the first time that the negative logarithm of proton (H⁺) concentration was used as a measure of acidity.
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On This Day - Feb 09 : Jacques Monod was born

Jacques Monod, François Jacob and André Lwoff received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1965 for their discoveries concerning the genetic control of enzyme and virus synthesis.
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On This Day - Jan 11 : Thompson trialled insulin

On the verge of death, the 14 year old diabetic agreed to the trial. Insulin was first discovered by Banting, Best and Macleod in 1921, but it was Collip’s work on the purification of insulin that enabled it to be used clinically.
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On This Day - Feb 11 : Nuclear fission published

This paper was the first to explain the theory of nuclear fission, the process by which the nucleus of an atom splits into lighter nuclei and releases a very large amount of energy in doing so.
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On This Day - Jan 12 : Antonio de Ulloa was born

He is credited with the discovery of platinum (Pt) after publishing in 1748 accounts of his time in South America. Platinum had actually been used by pre-columbian civilisations, making Ulloa’s work of a‘re-discovery’.
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On This Day - Feb 12 : Wentorf made borazon

Borazon, a material hard enough to scratch diamonds, is created by heating equal quantities of boron and nitrogen at temperatures greater than 1,800 °C. It is used to manufacture high-precision steel and to sharpen high-speed steel tools.
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On This Day - Jan 13 : Ford patented plastic car

The Soybean car, or “Hemp body car”, was the first car to have a body entirely made of plastic. It was 30% lighter than a regular metal car and the panels were said to be only a quarter of an inch (6 mm) thick.
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On This Day - Feb 13 : Julius Thomsen died

He predicted the existence of the noble gases before they were discovered. He was also interested in thermochemistry, measuring the heat produced from around 3,500 chemical reactions.
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On This Day - Jan 14 : Paul Vieille died

He invented modern nitrocellulose-based smokeless gunpowder in 1884. The smokeless powder was three times more powerful than black powder for the same weight and left virtually no residues of combustion.
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On This Day - Feb 14 : Silly putty was first made

The first Silly Putty was made by mixing silicone oil with boric acid. This formula has remained essentially unchanged for 50 years, and more than 4,500 tons have been sold since 1950.
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On This Day - Jan 15 : Water composition announced

He revealed that water was a compound of hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O), which was known at the time as “dephlogistonated air”. He later discovered the composition of air and made the first calculations of the Earth’s mass.
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On This Day - Feb 15 : von Euler-Chelpin was born

He shared the 1929 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Arthur Harden for their investigations on the fermentation of sugar and on fermentative enzymes.
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On This Day - Jan 16 : Andres Ekeberg was born

He discovered tantalum (Ta), which is named after the character Tantalus from Greek mythology. It is a rare transition metal that is highly resistant to corrosion.
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On This Day - Feb 16 : Man-made diamonds produced

The small diamonds were produced in Stockholm by the ASEA, one of Sweden’s major electrical manufacturing companies. The ASEA had employed a team of five scientists and engineers to work on the top-secret diamond-making project QUINTUS.
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On This Day - Jan 17 : Friedrich Kohlrausch died

His research focussed on the thermal, electrical and magnetic properties of electrolytes. He is recognised as one of the most important experimental physicists, with his early work contributing to the absolute system of electrical and magnetic measuring units.