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| NEWSLETTER - DECEMBER 8 | |
| 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. | |
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| Quotations for Today | |
| "The sediments of the past are many miles in collective thickness: yet the feeble silt of the rivers built them all from base to summit." - John Joly, Irish geologist (died 8 Dec 1933) "I observed that plants not only have the faculty to correct bad air in six to ten days, by growing in it...but that they perform this important office in a complete manner in a few hours; that this wonderful operation is by no means owing to the vegetation of the plant, but to the influence of light of the sun upon the plant." - Jan Ingenhousz (born 8 Dec 1730) | |
| QUIZ | |
| Births | |
| Eli Whitney, born 8 Dec 1765, was an American inventor, mechanical engineer, and manufacturer, best remembered as the inventor of the cotton gin - a machine that separates cotton fibre from the seeds. His most important development was the concept of mass-production using interchangeable parts, which won him a US government contract in 1797. Worn parts could be simply replaced with identical spare parts. What product did he supply to the US government using standardized parts? | |
| Jan Ingenhousz, born 8 Dec 1730, was a Dutch-born British physician and scientist whose early work was in medicine, and he popularized Edward Jenner's method using the inoculation of live smallpox vaccine as a protection against the disease. Yet he is best known for his discovery that sunlit green plants take in carbon dioxide, fix the carbon, and 'restore' the air (oxygen) required by animals for respiration. What is this process called? | |
| Deaths | |
| An English mathematician (1815-1864) helped establish modern symbolic logic and an algebra of logic, now named after him. By replacing logical operations by symbols, He showed that the operations could be manipulated to give logically consistent results, based on such concepts as complement and union of classes. The study of mathematical or symbolic logic developed mainly from his ideas, and is basic to the design of digital computer circuits. Who was this mathematician, or the name of his logical algebra? | |
| Events | |
| On 8 Dec of a certain year, the nuclei of three atoms of element 111 existed for about four-thousands of a second before decaying into smaller nuclei. The creation was announced by a team of German scientists. The new element was named unununium, symbol Uuu, according to an internationally adopted system for naming new elements. The atoms of the element were made by accelerating nickel atoms to high speed and bombarding them into bismuth, fusing to make the new nucleus. In which decade was this new element created? | |
| 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 December 8 web page of Today in Science History. Or, try this link first for just the brief answers. | |
| Fast answers for the previous newsletter for December 7: uranium fission does not release all the neutrons it produces at one time, but some come off at measurably later times, some seconds or minutes later; rhenium; the decade containing the year 1982; Bakelite; John Dunlop. | |
| Feedback | |
| If you enjoy this newsletter, the website, or wish to offer encouragement or ideas, please write. |
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