Newsletter for Monday 10 September

 

 

TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY

NEWSLETTER - SEPTEMBER 10

Before you look at today's web page, see if you can answer some of these questions about the events that happened on this day. Some of the names are very familiar. Others will likely stump you. Tickle your curiosity with these questions, then check your answers on today's web page.

On 10 Sep 1892, Arthur Holly Compton was born, an American physicist who was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize for his discovery and explanation of the Compton Effect. During World War II, he helped develop the atomic bomb. Today's Science Store pick, The Cosmos of Arthur Holly Compton, is a volume full of Compton's spirit in his collected essays edited by Marjorie Johnston, that will delight anyone interested in the impact of science on society, its history and philosophy. It remains available only as a used book, but several are available for about $10.00 (as of time of writing). Yesterday's pick: Dr John Snow - Pump Handle and Epidemiology. For picks from earlier newsletters, see the Today in Science Science Store home page.

Quotations for Today

"Yet is it possible in terms of the motion of atoms to explain how men can invent an electric motor, or design and build a great cathedral? If such achievements represent anything more than the requirements of physical law, it  means that science must investigate the additional controlling factors, whatever they may be, in order that the world of nature may be adequately understood. For a science which describes only the motion of inanimate things but fails to include the actions of living organisms cannot claim universality." - Arthur Holly Compton (born 10 Sep 1892) "Life is a copiously branching bush, continually pruned by the grim reaper of extinction, not a ladder of predictable progress." - Stephen Jay Gould, American paleontologist and science writer (born 10 Sep 1941) "Every work of science great enough to be well remembered for a few generations affords some exemplification of reasoning of the time when it was written; and each chief step in science has been a lesson in logic." - Charles Sanders Peirce, American scientist, logician, and philosopher (born 10 Sep 1839)

QUIZ

Births

Waldo Semon, born 10 Sep 1898, was an American chemical engineer who invented a plastic now produced in larger quantities than any other plastic except polyethylene. In 1926's, he discovered how to convert it from a hard, unworkable substance to a pliable one. It is now used in hundreds of products such as floor tile, garden hose, imitation leather, shower curtains, and coatings.  What is this popular plastic?

Arthur Holly Compton, born 10 Sep 1892, was an American physicist, engineer and a joint winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics (1927) for his discovery and explanation of what is known as the Compton effect. What is the Compton effect?

Deaths

Sir George Thomson (1892-1975) was an English physicist who was the joint recipient, (with American Clifton J. Division), of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1937 for demonstrating that electrons exhibit a certain property of waves. What wavelike electron phenomenon did he demonstrate?

Events

On 10 Sep of a certain year, the Lincoln Highway was opened as the first paved coast-to-coast highway in America. What was the decade of this event?

Answers

When you have your answers ready to all the questions above, you'll find all the information to check them, and more, on the September 10 web page of Today in Science History. Or, try this link first for just the brief answers.

Fast answers for the previous newsletter for September 9:  the rate of flow of electromagnetic energy; Luis Galvanic; the decade including the year 1967; moth; NBC.

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