Developed by J.J. Thompson, this model of the atom features negative particles (called corpuscles by Thompson) floating in a positive cloud, much like negative plums surrounded by positive pudding.
Begun by Leo Hendrik Baekeland when he invented Bakelite, a hard moldable plastic, by controlling the temperature and pressure applied to phenol and formaldehyde. By placing the reagents under suitable temperatures and pressures, he discovered that he could create a liquid that when cooled took on the shape of its container. The result was Bakelite. Its invention marked the beginning of the Age of Plastics, since it quickly became a fundamental part of American industry.
The Oil Drop Experiment, conducted by Robert Milikan and Harvey Fletcher, determined the charge of the electron. To do the experiment, they balanced downward gravitational force with upward drag and electric forces on small charged droplets of oil suspended between two metal electrodes.
French chemist, Georges Claude, developed neon tube lighting to exploit the neon that was produced as a byproduct of his air liquefaction business. He showed how when electricity passed through noble gases (inert gases), it produced a “flow discharge.” He filed his first patent for his technologies on March 7, 1910. In 1913, he described how there were two principal inventions that made neon lighting practical. The first was that Claude was able to develop techniques to purify the inert gases within a completely sealed glass tube. The second was that the invention was crucial to the development of the Claude lighting business because its design minimized the degradation of electrodes that transferred the electrical current from its external power supply to the glowing gases within the signs. Over time, glass makers and advertising executives used this invention to create bright advertisements through the glass tubing shaped as letters that were filled with neon.
Ludwig Albrecht Kossel, German biochemist, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1910 for his work in isolating and determining the chemical composition of nucleic acids. (Nucleic acids are also known as the genetic substance of biological cells.) He was also awarded the prize due to his research in cell biology and in the chemical composition of the cell nucleus. During his scientific career, he was able to isolate and describe the five organic compounds that are present in nucleic acids: adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine, and uracil.
In 1911, Ernest Rutherford theorized that atoms have their charge concentrated in a tiny nucleus. This theory was based on his discovery and interpretation of Rutherford scattering which occurred during his famous gold foil experiment. In this experiment, he fired alpha particles at a piece of gold foil. Based on the standing plum pudding model of the atom, which featured negative particles suspended in a cloud of positive charge, the molecules should have passed through the gold foil with some minor deflection. Some of the particles did just that, but others were reflected back to their source. This gave Rutherford that idea that a collision had occurred between the negative particles of the gold foil and the positive centers of some alpha particles.
Marie Curie was born in Warsaw, Poland on November 7, 1867. During her childhood, she went to local schools and had some scientific education from her father. Later in 1891, she travelled to Paris to continue her studies at Sorbonne. There, she obtained her licenciateships in Physics and the Mathematical Sciences. In 1894, she met Pierre Curie, a professor in the school of physics whom she married a year later. She later became Head of the Physics Laboratory and gained her doctorate in 1903. After Pierre’s death, she took his place as Professor of General Physics in the Faculty of Sciences, becoming the first woman to hold this position. She also became Director of the Curie Laboratory in the Radium Institute of the University of Paris. Marie Curie and her husband were inspired by the discovery of radioactivity (by Becquerel in 1896). Their studies led to the isolation of polonium and radium. Marie Curie developed methods to separate radium from radioactive residues in sufficient quantities to be able to study its properties and allow for its characterization. In 1903, she won half of the Nobel Prize for Physics (shared with her husband and Becquerel) for their study into spontaneous radiation. In 1911, she received a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work with radioactivity.
On January 6, 1912, Alfred Wegener first formally presented and published the hypothesis of continental drift in a lecture at a session in Frankfrut and in three articles in the journal Petermanns Geographischen Mitteilungen. This theory proposed that the continents of the Earth had once been joined and over time had somehow drifted apart. He presented much evidence using fossils found on different continents’ shores; however, he was unable to give a convincing explanation to what might have caused the drift. He suggested that they had been pulled apart by the centrifugal pseudoforce of the Earth’s rotation, but over time, calculations proved that the force was insufficient and implausible.
The British Passenger Liner sinks in the North Atlantic Ocean.
In 1913, Henry Moseley decided to test Van den Broek and Bohr’s hypothesis to see if spectral lines emitted from excited atoms fit the theory that the frequency of the spectral lines should be proportional to a measure of the square of Z. To do this, he conducted several experiments using wavelengths and movable anodic targets inside an x-ray tube. After conducting his experiments, Moseley concluded that the atomic number closely corresponds to the calculated electric charge of the nucleus, thus defining atomic numbers (also known as Moseley’s law). This theory disproved the idea that atomic weight as a significant player in the period law, rather that the elements varied periodically with atomic numbers.
Developed by Albert Einstein in 1916, the General Theory of Relativity is a geometric theory of gravitation. It remains modern physics's description of gravitation. It gives a description of gravity as a geometric property of spacetime (space and time). The curvature of spacetime, which causes gravity, is determined by the momentum and energy of the present matter and radiation.
In 1919, British scientist Francis W. Aston invented the mass spectrograph. This invention used magnetic and electrostatic fields to produce opposite deflections that converted molecules to ions. These ions were then sorted by their mass-to-charge ratio. This invention of Aston’s helped prove the existence of isotopes (different possible versions of the same element due to its number of neutrons). Using this device, he was able to identify 212 isotopes. These isotopes helped expand the study of nuclear masses, as well as lay the foundation for atomic energy and weaponry.
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