10 of the most important experiments that changed our world

the Experiments are different.

What did scientists and researchers in the pursuit of science. What crazy experiments they did not intend to open something new. It all now can bring a smile or, on the contrary, puzzling over the strangeness of what was happening, but then it was really important, and that it will be strange, nobody guessed. Nevertheless, many of these experiments, we owe the fact that we now have. In this article, you are offered a selection of the most strange, unusual, cool and very important studies ever conducted. Perhaps they led to the discovery of what you use in everyday life.

Science experiments

Even we, ordinary people, every day do experiments, the result of which affects our life. For example, what happens if you warm the meatballs in the microwave 40, and 50 seconds? Or what happens if you go home not so, as so, will it be faster? Strangely enough, this is also experiments that help us understand the world. In the same way scientists do.

The Most successful experiments change much and remain in history. We can say that this miraculous monument to our inquisitive mind and the desire of mankind to move forward and conquer new academic heights.

Below I will give examples of successful experiments and even one scientific failure, which will show that not everything always goes as planned, even if initially the experiment was very cool.

Measuring the world by Eratosthenes

This study was conducted at the end of the third century before our era enthusiast — a scientist named Eratosthenes, born in 276 BC in Cyrene (a Greek settlement on the territory of modern Libya).

Eratosthenes is continuously switched from one to another, as they were very enthusiastic people. At the same time he worked as a librarian in the famous Alexandria library. It was there that he conducted his famous experiment. He had heard that in the city of Siena on the Nile river (modern Aswan) the afternoon sun was shining, the day of the summer solstice. Intrigued by Eratosthenes measured the shadow cast by a vertical stick in Alexandria the same day and time. He determined that the angle of the sunlight there is 7.2 degrees, or 1/50 of the circle into 360 degrees.

the Contribution of Eratosthenes in geography cannot be overstated.

The Greeks knew that the Earth is spherical. Eratosthenes decided that knowing the distance between the two cities and the fact that the shadow angle is 1/50 of the total circumference, you can multiply these two values and get the length of the circumference of the Earth. In the end, he got the figure of 45 700 km. The real circumference is about 40,000 km.

Given the accuracy of the measuring instruments of that time and the fact that the distance between the cities was determined with an error of, we can say that its finding was very accurate, and the deviation is not too large. It was he who, carried away by such measurements, invented the science of geography, of which he is considered the father until now.

Who discovered the heart rate and blood flow

About the blood and how it flows in living organisms, said many people, including Galen — the Greek physician-philosopher, the theory of which had existed for about a thousand years. But only in 1628 was published a different theory, that changed everything.

Published by William Harvey, who was Royal physician at the court of James I. This work gave him time and that he enjoyed doing, sometimes putting a very strange and macabre experiments.

Blood — the Foundation of the body. And its study is very important.

For Example, Harvey publicly cut up animals to show what's inside them is very little blood. He also conducted experiments on the snakes, showing that if you hold down the blood vessels that lead to the heart, it shrinks and turns white, but if those are out of it, it swells. a So he proved the blood flow through the heart.

He also did experiments on volunteers. In particular, blocking the flow of blood to the extremities, to understand how it circulates through the human body.

As a result of his research, he concluded that the blood on the two circles, formed in the liver from food that people eat, and of course , feasting upon ”the spirit.” But in any case, it moves throughout the body, going even to the most remote corners of it.

now That we know that the blood flows through the lungs. Once didn't know that.

His theory he published in 1628 in the book De Motu Cordis (Movement of the heart). His approach is evidence-based, changed medical science, and today he is recognized as the father of modern medicine and physiology.

Who discovered genetics

The Child always look like their parents — from a small similarity to a full copy. Many people wondered why.

The Answers to these questions began to emerge about 150 years ago from a scientist born in the territory of the Czech Republic in 1822. The parents of Gregor Mendel didn't have money for the education of children and in 1843 he joined the Augustinian order, a monastic group that focused on research and training.

Hidden in the monastery in Brnoshy Gregor immediately became interested in science. At first he tried to cross colors, with new colors and shape of the petals. but Especially he was attracted by fuchsia. Then he switched to peas, thoroughly documenting his experiments and proved that when crossing green and yellow pea always turns out yellow. However, the crossing of these two yellow ”descendants” from time to time again given green peas.

To genetics came through the plants.

He was ahead of his time. His research has received little attention at the time, but decades later when other scientists discovered and reproduced the experiments of Mendel, they are seen as a breakthrough.

The Genius of Mendel's experiments was that he formulated a simple hypothesis, which very well explain some things instead of solve everything . So he laid the foundations of genetics gave modern scientists a great base for development.

How to open the color spectra of the light

Isaac Newton during the plague outbreak in his College town waited out the epidemic elsewhere, and often went to the local market, where to get a child's toy in the form of a prism. It just shows that it includes the light and produces a rainbow. It was all she could give, but Newton began to study her more closely and made an important discovery.

He proved that the usual light is divided into color spectra. This discovery helped to create the science called optics, which is an integral part of modern physics.

To prove that it was not in the prism, he passed the light through one prism, and one of the selected color flows — through the other. He hasn't changed color, it was not in the prism, and she could not change transmitted light, coloring it.

All used these prisms, but no one knew how they work.

In the original article, 1672, Newton insufficiently described installation, with whom he worked, so his contemporaries struggled, tried to repeat the experiment, but they couldn't do it. However, the results no one questioned because they were very convincing.

Newton did a lot of strange things, including a depression in biblical numerology, the occult and sticking pins into your eyelids, but this did not prevent him to make many important discoveries and to perpetuate his name in history.

How the spread of light waves

If to say something, then due to the sound transmitted to the ears of the listener. If you throw a stone, then go on the water waves, but they always have the environment in which they move. Light passes through air and through water, and even through a vacuum.

This situation gave rise to questions at the end of the 19th century. No one understood why there is no medium, but there is a traffic light. The only explanation was the existence of the luminiferous ether.

Working together at the University of Case Western in Ohio, albert Michelson and Edward Morley had intended to prove the existence of this ether. What they did is probably the most famous failed experiment in history.

albert Michelson.

The Hypothesis of the scientists was: when the earth revolves around the Sun, it continuously passes through the air, creating an ethereal wind. When the path of the light beam moving in the same direction as the wind, the light should move a little bit faster compared to the movement ”against the wind”.

At the beginning of 1880-x years, Michelson has invented a type of interferometer, an instrument that combines the . The Michelson interferometer emits light through the one way mirror. The light splits into two and the resulting beams are moving at right angles to each other. After some time, they are reflected from the mirrors back to the Central meeting place. If light rays arrive at different times due to a distortion (for example, from ether wind), they create a characteristic interference pattern.

Researchers have protecting your device from vibration by placing it on a solid Sandstone slab, and isolated him in the basement of the campus buildings. Michelson and Morley slowly turned the plate, expecting to see an interference pattern when light beams are synchronized with the direction of the air, but the speed of light has not changed.

and how do they appear?

In the end, the experiment failed, but scientists did not give up and in 1907, Michelson became the first American to receive the Nobel prize for study on the basis of optical devices. But doubts about the theory of ether laid the Foundation for the research of many other scientists. Including it indirectly led to the discovery of albert Einstein's theory of relativity.

an Experiment of Marie Curie

Marie Curie is one of the few women whose names are marked in large experiments.

Born in 1867 in Warsaw, she emigrated to Paris at the age of 24 years to have the opportunity to continue the study of mathematics and physics. There she met and married physicist Pierre Curie. With all her talent and abilities, she would most likely not entrenched in academic circles, if not for him. It is she put forward the basic ideas in the area in which they make discoveries.

For his doctoral thesis in 1897, Marie began to explore new-fangled form of radiation similar to x-rays and discovered just one year earlier. Using a device called the electrometer,created by Pierre and his brother, Marie measured the mysterious rays emitted by thorium and uranium. Regardless of the mineralogical composition of the elements (one was a yellow crystal, and the second — black powder) the radiation intensity was varied only in dependence on the number of the element.

Marie Curie — one of the main women in science.

Curie concluded that radioactivity — a term she invented — was an inherent property of individual atoms, resulting from their internal structure. Up to this point, scientists believed atoms are the elementary and indivisible. Marie opened the door for the understanding of matter at a fundamental, subatomic level.

Curie was the first woman to receive the Nobel prize in 1903, and one of the few people in General who received a second Nobel prize in 1911 (for her later discovery of the elements radium and polonium).

What is Pavlov's dog

I guess this experiment is the most common and the words ”Pavlov's dog” is often used when talking about a habit.

The Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov was even awarded the Nobel prize in 1904 for his work with dogs, exploring, as saliva and gastric juice . The study may seem strange and insignificant, but it gave answers to many questions concerning the digestion.

Pavlov and his students conducted an experiment with a group of dogs. One first shows the food, and then fed them, and the second group joined at a later stage of the experiment. The results showed that those dogs that knew once they saw food, they will get started to produce saliva and gastric juice in advance. The second group did not show such a result.

Pavlov experimented with dogs.

Later, the experiment was repeated with characters, who saw the dogs before feeding. For example, by displaying a light. In the end, it was found that the production of saliva and gastric juice is a reflex and does not depend on conscious actions.

The experiment showed that reflexes can be conditioned and unconditioned. That is not all reflexes are ”wired” into the body initially and may be acquired as development. The attempt to abandon such acquired reflexes forms the basis of many types of therapy.

Is the electron a particle of charge

The Twentieth century was to physics, a turbulent time: within little more than ten years, the world became acquainted with quantum physics, special theory of relativity and electrons — the first evidence that atoms are divisible part.

We had to understand the electrons are the charge carriers. Here and joined Robert millican, who has not achieved the special heights in physics.

In his laboratory at the University of Chicago he began working with containers with thick water vapor, called cloud chambers, and modify the electric field within them. Clouds of water droplets formed around charged atoms and molecules, before descending under the force of gravity. Adjusting the electric field, he could slow down or even stop falling drops, counteracting gravity by means of electricity.

Go figure with these electrons.

Later, millican and his disciples understood that , as it evaporates quickly. In the end, they switched to oil, which was sprayed with the spray from the spirits.

More and more sophisticated experiments with drops of oil ultimately determined that indeed the electron is a unit charge. They appreciated its value with great precision. It was a coup for the physics of elementary particles

How particles form waves

what do you think of light — a particle or a wave? Many scientists stopped at that light — a particle based on Newton's experiments with prisms. But the evidence of Thomas young destroyed this belief.

Yang was interested in everything — from Egyptology (he helped decipher the Rosetta stone) to medicine and optics. To explore the essence of light, in 1801, young set up an experiment. He made two slits in an opaque object that skipped through the sunlight and watched as the rays cast a number of bright and dark bands on the screen. Different sections of the young due to the fact that light propagates in waves, like ripples on a pond, with ridges and depressions of different light waves reinforcing and compensating each other.

Although modern physics in the beginning rejected the findings of Yang, the repetition of his experiments with two slits showed that particles of light are moving like waves. Further experiments proved that this is possible only if the particles move like waves. This discovery and its features including underlie quantum physics.

Light also consists of waves.

the proof of the prosperity of species

In the 1960s, and the environmentalists came to an agreement that habitat to thrive, mainly due todiversity of species in them. It was considered that the change of the ratio of individuals of these species does not change the whole habitat. But Robert Paine was disagree.

Payne conducted their experiments related to sea stars from tidal pools along the coast of Washington state. It turned out that the destruction of this single species can destabilize an entire ecosystem.

In this important ecosystem each fish.

Without sea stars, their production began to absorb mussels, greatly increasing their population. This led to the fact that they began to displace the algae and to take their place. In the end, the entire ecosystem has become just a breeding ground for mussels.

The Discovery Payne has had a great impact on , proving that it is necessary to preserve not separate species, and whole ecosystems.

Since the opening of the Payne turned a look at the entire system of interaction of living organisms. He died in 2016, and in recent years worked on the study of human influence on extinctions, including due to global warming.

what interested you the most.