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| NEWSLETTER - JANUARY 3 | |
| 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 | |
| "Since we humans have the better brain, isn't it our responsibility to protect our fellow creatures from, oddly enough, ourselves?" - Joy Adamson (died 3 Jan 1980) "After a duration of a thousand years, the power of astrology broke down when, with Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, the progress of astronomy overthrew the false hypothesis upon which the entire structure rested, namely the geocentric system of the universe. The fact that the earth revolves in space intervened to upset the complicated play of planetary influences, and the silent stars, related to the unfathomable depths of the sky, no longer made their prophetic voices audible to mankind. Celestial mechanics and spectrum analysis finally robbed them of their mysterious prestige." - Franz Cumont, Belgian archaeologist and philologist (born 3 Jan 1868) "The year 1918 was the time of the great influenza epidemic, the schools were closed. And this was when, as far as I can remember, the first explicitly strong interest in astronomy developed ... I took a piece of bamboo, and sawed a piece in the middle of each end, to put a couple of spectacle lenses in it. Well, the Pleiades looked nice because the stars were big. I thought I was looking at stars magnified. Well, they weren't. It was a little thing with two lenses at random on each end, and all you got were extra focal images, big things, but I thought I was looking at star surfaces. I was 12 years old." - William Wilson Morgan, American astronomer (born 3 Jan 1906) | |
| QUIZ | |
| Births | |
| William Wilson Morgan, born 3 Jan 1906, was an American astronomer who, in 1951, provided the first evidence of the shape of the Milky Way Galaxy. With Keenan and Kellman, he introduced stellar luminosity classes and the two-dimensional classification of stellar spectra strictly based on the spectra themselves. With Osterbrock and Sharpless he demonstrated the shape of the Galaxy using precise distances of O and B stars obtained from spectral classifications. What shape for the Milky Way Galaxy did his evidence provide? | |
| Robert Whitehead, born 3 Jan 1823, was a British engineer who invented the modern form of a certain weapon. By 1870, he had developed it in a useful form, and the British government purchased his invention the following year. Edison made a movie of the weapon being demonstrated in 1900. What was the weapon he developed? | |
| Deaths | |
| Reginald Punnet (1875-1967) devised the "Punnett Square" for which he remains known. His interest in natural science began as a child, while afflicted by appendicitis, when he read a series of books on biology that his father had bought. During World War I, Punnett developed a technique of separating chicks using sex-linked plumage colours to select the more useful male chicks. For what is the Punnett Square used? | |
| An English inventor, artist and potter (1730-1795) placed the manufacture of stoneware on a scientific basis, and founded the potteries of North Staffordshire. The agateware and unglazed blue or green stoneware he decorated with white neo-classical designs, used pigments he invented. He designed machinery and kilns. For his invention of a pyrometer for measuring high temperatures, he was made a fellow of the Royal Society. Can you name this famous maker of pottery? | |
| Events | |
| On 3 Jan of a certain year, the world's first electric watch was introduced in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, by the Hamilton Watch Company. The idea of a watch which never needed winding was very exciting to consumers, and its popularity was enhanced by a number of very dramatic case styles with non-traditional asymmetrical styling. In what decade were the world's first electric watches introduced? | |
| On 3 Jan 1919, Ernest Rutherford first accomplished the artificial transmutation of an element. By bombarding atoms of a certain element with alpha particles emitted by radioactive materials he transmuted some of these atoms into another element. What was the element with which he began, and what element resulted? | |
| 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 January 3 web page of Today in Science History. Or, try this link first for just the brief answers. | |
| Fast answers for the previous newsletter for January 2: Isaac Asimov; niobium; a pendulum; the decade including the year 1959; 15 billion light-years away. | |
| Feedback | |
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