Pollock.Whyte.Plummer

in the content of your page here.

Patrick Whyte.Jacob Pollock.Christopher Plummer


 * Time 450 A.D - Years Prior**

__Democritus__



Democritus lived from 460 BCE to 370 BCE. Democritus mentor was named Leucippus, they were very close and had similar ideas about the speculation of atoms. Many people consider Democritus to be the " Father of Modern Science". Democritus believed that everything was composed of atoms, that were impossible to see. Democritus with his mentor Leucippus came up with the first proposed view of atoms. Democritus believed that there were different atoms that differ in shape, size, and their arrangement. Democritus was not just into chemistry but mathematics as well. Democritus perfered the study of geometry. Democritus was a genius for his time and he was stated " Education is one of the most noblest things to pusuit, but cautioned that learning without sense leads to error." Democritus has many books and experiments still in use today and is one of the most important people of our history.

__Leucippus__



Leucippus (Democritus mentor) lived in the first half of the 5th century B.C. Lecippus was probably born in area of Miletus, but people also mentioned Abdera and Elea as other possible birth places. Lecippus who is also known as Leukippos was the first greek to develop the theory of atomism. Atomism is the idea that everything is composed entirely of various imperishable, indivisible elements called atoms. This idea was researched much more by his successor, Democritus. Leucippus was known as a shadowy figure by his community. Although it is hard to realize how much Democritus learned from Leucippus, it's no question that without Leucippus Democritus might not have turned out to be the man that we know today.

__Epicurus__

( http://web.carroll.edu/~msmillie/perspectives/images/epicurus.gif) Epicurus lived for a long 72 years from 341 BCE to 270 BCE. Epicurus was known as an ancient greek philosopher. Epicurus was the founder of a school of philosophy called Epicureanism. This school had a small, but loyal group of followers during his lifetime. Surprisingly Epicurus admitted women and slaves into his school, trying to introduce the new concept of fundamental human egalitaranism into the greek thought. Epicurus had wrote over 300 pieces of work, however not much is left of them in the modern world. Much of what is known about Epicurean philosophy is from later followers and commentators. Epicurus believed that the purpose of philosophy was to the happy, tranquil life. Epicurus surprisingly believed that the gods do not reward or punish humans and that the universe is infinite and eternal. Epicurus believed that the events which occured on earth were ultimately based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space. Epicurus is credited for discovering the first scientific method. Epicurus believed that nothing should be believed unless in has been tested and witnessed. Epicurus believed that all good and bad deive from the sensations of pleasure and pain. Epicurus was a great man who contributed a lot of great chemistry to our history.


 * Time 1700-1800**

__John Dalton__

( http://www.learner.org/courses/essential/physicalsci/images/s4.dalton.jpg )

John Dalton was born on September 6th 1766 and died on July 27th 1844. John Dalton was an English chemist, meteorologist, and physicist. John Dalton is best known for his work in the development of modern atomic theory. Dalton also researched color blindness which is sometimes referred to as Daltonism. Dalton was born at Eaglesfield in Cumberland, England. He was born into a Quaker family and a son of a weaver. At the time in 1790 John Dalton had seemed to be considering law or medicine, but was not supported by his relatives. Dalton was later appointed as a teacher in mathematics at the "New School" in Manchester. In 1800, Dalton became a secretary of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. In the year after his appointment of secretary he orally presented important papers titled "Experimental Essays". These essays were published in the Memoirs of the Lit and Phil in 1802. Dalton discovered information on gas laws, atomic weight, and most importantly his atomic theory.

** Five main points of Dalton's atomic theory **
( wikipedia.com)
 * The atoms of a given element are different from those of any other element; the atoms of different elements can be distinguished from one another by their respective relative atomic weights.
 * All atoms of a given element are identical.
 * Atoms of one element can combine with atoms of other elements to form chemical compounds; a given compound always has the same relative numbers of types of atoms.
 * Atoms cannot be created, divided into smaller particles, nor destroyed in the chemical process; a chemical reaction simply changes the way atoms are grouped together.
 * Elements are made of tiny particles called atoms.

( http://web.sbu.edu/chemistry/wier/atoms/daltonelements.gif )

__Andreas Sigismund Marggraf__

( http://z.about.com/d/chemistry/1/0/P/8/1/Andreas_Sigismund_Marggraf.jpg)

Andreas Sigismund Marggraf was born on March 3rd 1709 and died August 7th 1782. Andreas was a German chemist and studied analytical chemistry from Berlin. Andreas father named Henning Christian Marggraf owned a pharmacy in Berlin and lectured at the Collegium Medico-Chirurgicum. Which is a school for medical and surgery. Many believed that this is the reason why Andreas Sigismund Marggraf entered chemistry in the first place. Andreas did many experiments like isolating zinc in 1746. Andreas did this by heating calamine and carbon, however he was not the first to do this but is credited with describing the process and basic theory. Marggraf discovered sugar in beets and found a method using alcohol to extract it. Later his student named Franz Achard devised an economical industrial method to extract sugar in its pure form. Andreas Sigismund Marggraf introduced several new methods into the experimental chemistry, which lead future chemists in the right direction.

__Charles-Augustin de Coulomb__

( http://www.discoverhover.org/infoinstructors/newguides/images/Coulomb.jpg )

Charles-Augstin de Coulomb lived from June 14th 1736 and died on August 23 1806. Charles was born in Angouleme, France, to a wealthy family. Charles studied at the very famous College des Quatre-Nations where he studied mathematics. Charles- Augustin de Coulomb was a French physicist who is best known for Coulomb's law. The SI unit of charge was named the coulomb, in his honor. SI stands for the International System of Units, which is the modern form of the metric system and is generally a system of units of measurement devised around seven base units .Coulombs law is a law of physics describing the electrostatic interaction between electrically charged particles. Coulomb studied it and was first published in 1783. Charles-Augstin de Coulomb's Law: //The magnitude of the electrostatic force between two point electric charges is directly proportional to the product of the magnitudes of each of the charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the two charges// ( www.wikipedia.com ) Coulomb also discovered the torsion balance, which is used to measure weak forces. Coulomb discovered this in 1777, where he used it to measure the electrostatic force between charges. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles-Augustin_de_Coulomb )


 * Time 1800 - 1875

__Sir William Crookes__

( http://nientedinuovo.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/crookes.jpg )

Sir William Crookes was born on the 17th of June 1832 and died on the 4th of April 1919. Sir William was the eldest son of Joseph Crookes, who was a tailor of north country origin whose second wife was Mary Scoot. Sir William Crookes was a chemist and physicist. Sir William Cookes studied and attended the Royal College of Chemistry, which is located in London. While Crookes attended the Royal College of Chemistry and after he worked on spectroscopy. Spectroscopy was the study of the interaction between radiation and matter as a function of wave length. Historically spectroscopy was referred to the use of visible light dispersed according to its wavelength by a prism. Sir William Crookes studied vacuum tubes, which lead him to his invention of the Crookes tube. Crookes Tube:

( https://reich-chemistry.wikispaces.com/file/view/crookstube.jpg/31433269/crookstube.jpg )

William's Crookes tube was an early experiment electrical discharge tube. With his invention cathode rays (electrons) were discovered. Cathode rays are steams of electrons observed in vacuum tubes ( Crookes Tube) that are equipped with at least two metal electrodes to which a voltage is applied. Crookes also discovered an unknown element with a bright green emission line in its spectrum. Sir William named this previously unknown element Thalium, from the Greek word which means a green shoot. Also, Crooke is credited to indentify the first known sample of helium in 1895. Sir William was also the inventor of the Crookes radiometer. The Crookes radiometer consists of an airtight glass bulb, which contains a partial vacuum. With all of Sir William Crooke's great inventions the world wold be a very different place, and chemistry might have not been the same. **

__Welhelm C. Roentger__

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Röntgen was born in Lennep (which is today a borough of Remschied in Rhenish Prussia as the only child of a merchant and manufacturer of cloth. In 1865, he tried to attend the University of Utrect without having the necessary credentials required for a regular student. Upon hearing that he could enter the Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zurich (today known as the ETH Zurich), he passed its examinations, and began studies there as a student of mechanical engineering.During 1895 Röntgen was investigating the external effects from the various types of vacuum tube equipment when an electrical discharge is passed through them.

actual x-ray of wifes hand

On the evening of November 8, 1895, he found that, if the discharge tube is enclosed in a sealed, thick black carton to exclude all light, and if he worked in a dark room, a paper plate covered on one side with barium platinocyanide placed in the path of the rays became fluorescent even when it was as far as two metres from the discharge tube. During subsequent experiments he found that objects of different thicknesses interposed in the path of the rays showed variable transparency to them when recorded on a photographic plate. When he immobilised for some moments the hand of his wife in the path of the rays over a photographic plate, he observed after development of the plate an image of his wife's hand which showed the shadows thrown by the bones of her hand and that of a ring she was wearing, surrounded by the penumbra of the flesh, which was more permeable to the rays and therefore threw a fainter shadow. This was the first "röntgenogram" ever taken. In further experiments, Röntgen showed that the new rays are produced by the impact of cathode rays on a material object. Because their nature was then unknown, he gave them the name X-rays.


 * __Henri Becquerel ( December 15, 1852- August 25, 1908)__**

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Antoine Henri Becquerel was born in Paris on December 15, 1852, a member of a distinguished family of scholars and scientists. His father, Alexander Edmond Becquerel, was a Professor of Applied Physics and had done research on solar radiation and on phosphorescence, while his grandfather, Antoine César, had been a Fellow of the Royal Society and the inventor of an electrolytic method for extracting metals from their ores. He entered the Polytechnic in 1872, then the government department of Ponts-et-Chaussées in 1874, becoming ingénieur in 1877 and being promoted to ingénieur-en-chef in 1894. In 1888 he acquired the degree of docteur-ès-sciences. From 1878 he had held an appointment as an Assistant at the Museum of Natural History, taking over from his father in the Chair of Applied Physics at the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers. In 1892 he was appointed Professor of Applied Physics in the Department of Natural History at the Paris Museum. He became a Professor at the Polytechnic in 1895.



Bacqerel worked on the subject of terrestrial magnetism. In 1896, his previous work was overshadowed by his discovery of the phenomenon of natural radioactivity. Following a discussion with Henri Poincaré on the radiation which had recently been discovered by Röntgen (X-rays) and which was accompanied by a type of phosphorescence in the vacuum tube, Becquerel decided to investigate whether there was any connection between X-rays and naturally occurring phosphorescence. He had inherited from his father a supply of uranium salts, which phosphoresce on exposure to light. When the salts were placed near to a photographic plate covered with opaque paper, the plate was discovered to be fogged. The phenomenon was found to be common to all the uranium salts studied and was concluded to be a property of the uranium atom. Later, Becquerel showed that the rays emitted by uranium, which for a long time were named after their discoverer, caused gases to ionize and that they differed from X-rays in that they could be deflected by electric or magnetic fields. For his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity Becquerel was awarded half of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903, the other half being given to Pierre and Marie Curie for their study of the Becquerel radiation.


 * __J.J Thomson (December 18, 1856- August 30, 1940)__**



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 * Joseph John Thomson** was born in Cheetham Hill, a suburb of Manchester on December 18, 1856. He enrolled at Owens College, Manchester, in 1870, and in 1876 entered Trinity College, Cambridge as a minor scholar. Thomson's early interest in atomic structure was reflected in his //Treatise on the Motion of Vortex Rings// which won him the Adams Prize in 1884. Thompson was credited with the discovery of electrons and isotopes.



Until 1897, scientists believed atoms were indivisible, the ultimate particles of matter, but Thomson proved them wrong when he discovered that atoms contained particles known as electrons. Thomson discovered this through his explorations on the properties of cathode rays. Thomson found that the rays could be deflected by an electric field (in addition to magnetic fields, which was already known). He concluded that these rays, rather than being waves, were composed of very light negatively charged particles which he called "corpuscles". (Later scientists preferred the name electron which had been suggested by George Johnstone Stoney in 1894, prior to Thomson's actual discovery).Thomson believed that the corpuscles emerged from the atoms of the trace gas inside his cathode ray tubes. He thus concluded that atoms were divisible, and that the corpuscles were their building blocks. To explain the overall neutral charge of the atom, he proposed that the corpuscles were distributed in a uniform sea of positive charge; this was the plum pudding model as the electrons were embedded in the positive charge like plums in a plum pudding (although in Thomson's model they were not stationary).

__**Marie Curie (November 7, 1867- July 9, 1934)

** [|**http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1903/marie-curie-bio.html**]__

Marie Curie, was born in Warsaw on November 7, 1867, the daughter of a secondary-school teacher. She received a general education in local schools and some scientific training from her father. She became involved in a students' revolutionary organization and found it prudent to leave Warsaw, then in the part of Poland dominated by Russia, for Cracow, which at that time was under Austrian rule. In 1891, she went to Paris to continue her studies at the Sorbonne where she obtained Licenciateships in Physics and the Mathematical Sciences.

Her early researches, together with her husband, were often performed under difficult conditions, laboratory arrangements were poor and both had to undertake much teaching to earn a livelihood. The discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel in 1896 inspired the Curies in their brilliant researches and analyses which led to the isolation of polonium, named after the country of Marie's birth, and radium. Mme. Curie developed methods for the separation of radium from radioactive residues in sufficient quantities to allow for its characterization and the careful study of its properties, therapeutic properties in particular.


 * __Robert A. Millikan (March 22, 1868- December 19, 1953)__**

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Robert Andrews Millikan was born on the 22nd of March, 1868, in Morrison, Ill. (U.S.A.), as the second son of the Reverend Silas Franklin Millikan and Mary Jane Andrews.As a scientist, Millikan made numerous momentous discoveries, chiefly in the fields of electricity, optics, and molecular physics. His earliest major success was the accurate determination of the charge carried by an electron, using the elegant "falling-drop method"; he also proved that this quantity was a constant for all electrons (1910), thus demonstrating the atomic structure of electricity. Next, he verified experimentally Einstein's all-important photoelectric equation, and made the first direct photoelectric determination of Planck's constant h (1912-1915). In addition his studies of the Brownian movements in gases put an end to all opposition to the atomic and kinetic theories of matter. During 1920-1923, Millikan occupied himself with work concerning the hot-spark spectroscopy of the elements (which explored the region of the spectrum between the ultraviolet and X-radiation), thereby extending the ultraviolet spectrum downwards far beyond the then known limit. The discovery of his law of motion of a particle falling towards the earth after entering the earth's atmosphere, together with his other investigations on electrical phenomena, ultimately led him to his significant studies of cosmic radiation (particularly with ionization chambers).

Millikan's Experiment


 * __Ernest Rutherford (August 30, 1871- October 1937)__**

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Ernest Rutherford was born on August 30, 1871, in Nelson, New Zealand, the fourth child and second son in a family of seven sons and five daughters. who became known as the father of nuclear physics. In early work he discovered the concept of radioactive half life, proved that radioactivity involved the transmutation of one chemical element to another, and also differentiated and named alpha and beta radiation. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908 "for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances". Rutherford performed his most famous work after he received this prize. In 1911, he postulated that atoms have their positive charge concentrated in a very small nucleus and thereby pioneered the Rutherford model or planetary, model of the atom through his discovery and interpretation of Rutherford scattering in his gold foil experiment. He is widely credited with first splitting the atom in 1917, and leading the first experiment to split the nucleus in a controlled manner by two students under his direction, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton in 1932.

Rutherfords gold foil experiment


 * __Niels Bohr (October 7, 1885-November 18, 1962)__**

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Niels Bohr was born on October 7, 1885 in Coppenhagen Denmark. His father was a professor of physiology at Coppenhagen University which helped to enrich Niels Bohr and his younger brother to create their interests in science. While attending Coppenhagen University Bohr recieved guidance from Professor C. Christiansen who was a physicist, which led to Niels Bohr recieving his Master's degree in Physics in 1909, and later his Doctor's degree in 1911. As a student, Bohr had heard about a prize that was to be given by the Academy of Sciences in Copenhagen for finding a solution to a certain scientific problem. This led to him to investigate the surface tension by means of oscillating fluid jets, he did both and experimental and therotical investigation of this. He carried out his work for this problem in his fathers laboratory, and later was awarded a gold medal for solving the science problem as well as being published in the Tansactions of the Royal Society in 1908. Throught his career, Bohr had over 115 publications and of those three became books in the English language. Bohr escaped Denmark during the Nazi occupation during WWII, and went to Sweden and later went off to England and America where he was associated with the Atomic Energy Project. Niels Bohr died in Copenhage on November 18, 1962.


 * __Erwin Schrodinger (August 12, 1887-January 4, 1961)__**

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Erwin Schrodinger was born on August 12, 1887 in Vienna. Erwin was the only child of Rudolf Schrodinger who was married to Alexander Bauer's daughter, Bauer was his Professor of Chemistry at the Technical College of Vienna. Erwin's father was a very gifted man with a wide education. Schrodinger's interests lead back to his school days where he gained a liking in the scientific disciplines as well as the ancient grammar and the beauty of German poetry. He was a student at the University of Vienna from 1906-1910 where he was strongly influenced by Fritz Hasenohrl who was Boltzmann's successor. For his work with his orbit theory and his belief that atomic spectra should really be determined by some kind of eigenvalue problem, he shared the 1933 Nobel Prize with Dirac. Schrodinger continued to research and publish a lot of papers on different topics this whole time, and eventually retired to an honoured position in Vienna. He died January 4, 1961 after suffering from a long illness.


 * __James Chadwick (October 20, 1891-July 24, 1974__**)

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James Chadwick was born in Cheshire, England on October 20, 1891. He was the son of John Joseph Chadwick and Anne Mary Knowles. His education includes Manchester Hight School and then Manchester University in 1908, he graduated from the Honours School of Physics in 1911 and then spent the following two years working in the Physical Laboratory in Manchester under Professor Rutherford. There he worked on different radioactivity problems, and also gained his M.Sc. degree in 1913. He also was awarded the 1851 Exhibition Scholarship in 1913 and went to work in Berlin at the Physikalisch Technische Reichsantalt at Charlottenburg under Professor H. Geiger. Chadwick interned in the Zivilgefangenenlager, Ruhleben during WWI. When the war was over in 1919, he went back to England where he accepted the Wollaston Studenship at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and continued to work for Rutherford. While Chadwick was away, Rutherford moved to the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge and successfully disintegrated atoms by bombarding nitrogen with alpha particles with the emission of a proton. This is recognized as being the first artificial nuclear tansformation. Chadwick joined back up with Rutherford in Cambridge and accomplished the transmutation of other light elements by bombardment with alpha particles and in making studies of the properties and structure of atomic nuclei. James Chadwick died on July 24, 1974.


 * __Werner Heisenberg (December 5, 1901-February 1, 1976)__**

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Werner Heisenberg was born in Wurzburg on December 5, 1901. He was born the son of Dr. August Heisenberg and his wife Annie Wecklein. Werner's father a Professor of Middle and Modern Greek languages at the University of Munich. He went to the Maximilian school in Munich until 1920 and went on to the University of Munich to study physics under Sommerfeld, Wien, Pringsheim, and Rosenthal. He went to Gottingen to study under Max Born, Franck, and Hilbert during the winter of 1922-1923. He attained his Ph.D. at the University of Munich in 1923 and went on to become the Assistant to Max Born at the University of Gottingen in 1924. Werner Heisenberg's name will always be synonymous with his theory of quantum mechanics which was published when he was only 23 years old in 1925. Heisenberg was awarded the Physics Nobel Prize in 1932 for this theory and the applications of it which resulted especially in the discovery of allotropic forms of hydrogen. After 1953, Heisenberg's own theoretical work was more concentrated on the unified field theory of elementary particles which seems to him to be the key to an understanding of the physics of elementary particles. He died on February 1, 1976.