01-06-2012, 05:11 PM
Greatest Science Discov eries of All Time
100 Greatest Science Discoveries of All T.pdf (Size: 1.62 MB / Downloads: 37)
INTRODUCTION
Dis cov ery! The very word sends tin gles surg ing up your spine. It quick ens your pulse.
Dis cov er ies are the mo ments of “Ah, ha! I un der stand!” and of “Eu reka! I found it!”
Ev ery one longs to dis cover some thing—any thing! A dis cov ery is find ing or ob serv ing
some thing new—some thing un known or un no ticed be fore. It is no tic ing what was al ways
there but had been over looked by all be fore. It is stretch ing out into un touched and un -
charted re gions. Dis cov er ies open new ho ri zons, pro vide new in sights, and cre ate vast for -
tunes. Dis cov er ies mark the prog ress of hu man civ i li za tions. They advance human
knowledge.
Court room ju ries try to dis cover the truth. An thro pol o gists dis cover ar ti facts from past
hu man civ i li za tions and cul tures. Peo ple un der go ing psy cho ther apy try to discover
themselves.
When we say that Co lum bus “dis cov ered” the New World, we don’t mean that he cre -
ated it, de vel oped it, de signed it, or in vented it. The New World had al ways been there. Na -
tives had lived on it for thou sands of years be fore Co lum bus’s 1492 ar rival. They knew the
Ca rib bean Is lands long be fore Co lum bus ar rived and cer tainly didn’t need a Eu ro pean to
dis cover the is lands for them. What Co lum bus did do was make Eu ro pean so ci et ies aware
of this new con ti nent. He was the first Eu ro pean to lo cate this new land mass and put it on
the maps. That made it a discovery.
How to Use This Book
This book pro vides a wealth of in for ma tion on—ob vi ously—sci ence dis cov er ies, but
also on the pro cess of do ing sci ence, and glimpses into the lives of the many fas ci nat ing
peo ple who have ad vanced our sci en tific knowledge.
Use the book as a ref er ence for sci ence units and les sons fo cused on dif fer ent as pects
of, or fields of sci ence. Use it to in tro duce units on dis cov er ies, or on the pro cess of do ing
sci ence. Use it as a ref er ence for sci ence bi og ra phy re search. Use it as an in tro duc tion to the
pro cess of dis cov ery and the pro cess of con duct ing sci en tific study. Use it for fun reading.
Each en try is di vided into four sec tions. An in tro duc tory sec tion de fines the dis cov ery
and lists its name, year of dis cov ery, and dis cov er ing sci en tist. This is fol lowed by a brief
jus ti fi ca tion for plac ing this dis cov ery on the great est 100 list (“Why Is This One of the 100
Greatest?”).
The body of each en try (“How Was It Dis cov ered?”) fo cuses on how the dis cov ery
was made. These sec tions pro vide a look at the pro cess of sci ence and will help stu dents ap -
pre ci ate the dif fi culty of, the im por tance of, and the pro cess of sci en tific dis cov ery. Fol low -
ing this dis cus sion, I have in cluded a Fun Fact (an in trigu ing fact re lated to the sub ject of the
dis cov ery) and a few se lected ref er ences. More gen eral ref er ences are listed at the back of
the book.
Why Is This One of the 100 Great est?
The con cepts of buoy ancy (wa ter pushes up on an ob ject with a force equal to the
weight of wa ter that the ob ject dis places) and of le vers (a force push ing down on one side of
a le ver cre ates a lift ing force on the other side that is pro por tional to the lengths of the two
sides of the le ver) lie at the foun da tion of all quan ti ta tive sci ence and en gi neer ing. They rep -
re sent hu man ity’s ear li est break throughs in un der stand ing the re la tion ships in the phys i cal
world around us and in de vis ing math e mat i cal ways to de scribe the phys i cal phe nom ena of
the world. Count less en gi neer ing and sci en tific advances have depended on those two
discoveries.
How Was It Dis cov ered?
In 260 B.C. 26-year-old Ar chi me des stud ied the two known sci ences—as tron omy and
ge om e try—in Syr a cuse, Sic ily. One day Ar chi me des was dis tracted by four boys play ing
on the beach with a drift wood plank. They bal anced the board over a waist-high rock. One
boy strad dled one end while his three friends jumped hard onto the other. The lone boy was
tossed into the air.
The boys slid the board off-cen ter along their bal anc ing rock so that only one-quar ter
of it re mained on the short side. Three of the boys climbed onto the short, top end. The
fourth boy bounded onto the ris ing long end, crash ing it back down to the sand and cat a pult -
ing his three friends into the air.
Ar chi me des was fas ci nated. And he de ter mined to un der stand the prin ci ples that so
eas ily al lowed a small weight (one boy) to lift a large weight (three boys).
Ar chi me des used a strip of wood and small wooden blocks to model the boys and their
drift wood. He made a tri an gu lar block to model their rock. By mea sur ing as he bal anced
dif fer ent com bi na tions of weights on each end of the le ver (lever came from the Latin word
mean ing “to lift”), Ar chi me des re al ized that le vers were an ex am ple of one of Eu clid’s pro -
por tions at work. The force (weight) push ing down on each side of the le ver had to be pro -
por tional to the lengths of board on each side of the bal ance point. He had dis cov ered the
math e mat i cal con cept of le vers, the most com mon and basic lifting system ever devised.