51–60 of 209 posts
This is how Lord Rayleigh became the first person to figure out a single molecule’s dimensions, many years before anyone could see such molecules."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Seems questionable that Rayleigh would have known that oil molecules are hydrophobic on one end and hydrophilic on the other.
That's not a true thing, so it kinda doesn't matter. Surfactants (soaps, emulsifiers) have hydrophobic and hydrophilic ends. Oils are just straight up hydrophobic and nonpolar and don't have a water-loving end.
I love articles like this. I feel like too often in science education (at least my science education) that laws and theories are presented as just something that you need to memorize, when in my opinion the stories of how things were originally discovered and figured out is eminently more fascinating and inspiring. Like I remember having to learn all of these biochemical pathways, but I left school with nary a clue a…
Did you get your physics education in high school or university? I only had to take one physics class in the USA at college for my major, quantum electrodynamics for electrical engineering but my professor wrote the textbook and I recall he went over each experiment starting from the fundamentals of our understanding of the basics of the atom, Newton's understanding of light at the time, double slit experiment, to Ma…
Isaac Asimov wrote a couple books that follow the narrative of science from the beginnings up until the 80s or so, which I highly recommend. One is called Atom and is more focused on how we got to our “present” understanding of particles. There’s also one that takes a broader view, it’s something like History of Science (? not at my bookshelf right now).
There’s several books in this genre for math as well. IMO it’s a much better structure for pedagogy since we can piggy back the education on our natural wiring to care about narrative and mystery/puzzles.
I love articles like this. I feel like too often in science education (at least my science education) that laws and theories are presented as just something that you need to memorize, when in my opinion the stories of how things were originally discovered and figured out is eminently more fascinating and inspiring. Like I remember having to learn all of these biochemical pathways, but I left school with nary a clue a…
It also does a great job of explaining the different characters and their stories. Some little-known who moved chemistry forwards in profound ways, and others, very well-known, who through their loyalty to false theories ended up holding it back.
It's also a pretty short book when helps make it feel accessible.
I love articles like this. I feel like too often in science education (at least my science education) that laws and theories are presented as just something that you need to memorize, when in my opinion the stories of how things were originally discovered and figured out is eminently more fascinating and inspiring. Like I remember having to learn all of these biochemical pathways, but I left school with nary a clue a…
I would have loved to have had a course in school about "The Design of Scientific Experiments." One that described the processes of landmark historical experiments from antiquity onward, and challenged students throughout: "Given this set of constraints, how would you design and execute an experiment to estimate the size of the Earth? Disprove phlogiston and luminiferous aether? Measure the speed of light?"
I don't think many people today would be able to propose the Michelson Morley experiment and then actually do it. It was truly heoric (and Michelson was a genius). We did this oil/water experiment in freshman physics or chemistry lab. It was rushed, everybody just did the minimum, the teachers barely explained any of it, and then we moved on.
I love articles like this. I feel like too often in science education (at least my science education) that laws and theories are presented as just something that you need to memorize, when in my opinion the stories of how things were originally discovered and figured out is eminently more fascinating and inspiring. Like I remember having to learn all of these biochemical pathways, but I left school with nary a clue a…
We did it with several hundred volts (DC, scary) in college and it was pretty fun collecting the data and watching the numbers fall out in excel doing the analysis.
Semi off topic: Interesting to look at picture of the text of the 1890 paper. That typesetting is almost the same as modern scientific papers. Maybe Rayleigh had an early copy of LaTeX? ;-)
For more like this, check out this lecture series: https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/the-evidence-for-modern-...
It's by a guy called Don Lincoln and it's about how we established things like the existence of atoms, the speed of light, and many other fundamental things that are good to know.
It's also an audiobook, though the lectures are easier to follow.