1. Edison was not smart when he was a child, but he was good at observation, diligent in thinking, and liked to get to the bottom of things. Once, his father saw him lying motionless in the hay and asked very strangely: "What are you doing?" Little Edison replied calmly: "I am hatching chicks!" It turned out that he saw Hens can hatch chicks, and I want to try it myself.
The father was angry and funny, and told him that humans cannot hatch chicks. On the way home, he kept staring at his father and asked, "Why can hens hatch chicks, but I can't?" From then on, everyone said that Edison was a "idiot." Once, in order to understand the mystery of fire, he actually lit a fire in a neighbor's barn, causing a fire. Afterwards, he was severely beaten by his father.
Edison went to school when he was 7 years old. At that time, the school curriculum was very rigid and corporal punishment was also practiced. Young Edison was very dissatisfied with this. The teacher's lecture was boring and could not arouse his interest.
He didn’t study his homework well, but he had many strange questions in his mind. His classmates said he was stupid, and his teacher said he was an imbecile. Less than three months into school, he was forced to drop out. This was the only formal education he received in his life.
Edison’s mother personally taught her child to read and write, and took the trouble to answer all kinds of questions he raised. Once, his mother bought him a "Nature Reader", and he was immediately fascinated by the small experiments introduced in the book. He set up a small laboratory at home, spent all his pocket money on purchasing experimental supplies, and conducted experiments whenever he had time.
When Edison was 11 years old, he worked as a newsboy on the train. After getting permission from the conductor, he set up a simple small laboratory in a corner of the luggage car.
Once, the vibration of the train knocked a bottle of yellow phosphorus to the ground and caught fire. The flames licked toward the pile of luggage. Edison hurriedly took off his clothes and beat the fire, shouting desperately: "Fight the fire!" Everyone heard the sound and rushed to put out the fire in time. The train conductor was furious, slapped Edison hard in the face, and threw all his experimental supplies out of the car. Edison's right ear was deafened.
Later, Edison became a night shift operator. One morning at three or four o'clock in the morning, he got off work and carried dozens of books he bought from the second-hand bookstore during the day back to his residence. The policeman on patrol saw him from a distance, suspected that he was a thief, and shouted to him to stop. Unfortunately, he was deaf and couldn't hear, but he still hurried on. The police thought he was going to run away and hurriedly shot him.
When the whistling bullets flew past his ears, Edison stopped. The police caught up with him, and when they asked, they found out that he was deaf and that he was carrying old books. He took a deep breath and said, "You are lucky. If my shooting skills were accurate, you would have lost your life!"
Because Edison made great contributions to mankind, he was respected all over the world. In 1922, he was selected as the first among the 12 great men of contemporary America.
2. Bell was the man who invented the telephone. He was born in England in 1847. When he was young, he and his father were engaged in teaching deaf-mute people. He once wanted to build a machine that would allow deaf-mute people to see sounds with their eyes.
In 1873, Bell, who became a professor at Boston University in the United States, began to study a device for transmitting many telegrams on the same line - the multi-task telegraph, and came up with the idea of ??using electric current to transmit people's voices to distant places. , so that people who are thousands of miles apart can talk face to face. So Bell began researching telephones.
It was June 2, 1875. Bell and his assistant Watson were experimenting with multi-task telegraph machines in two rooms respectively. An accident inspired Bell. There was a spring on the telegraph machine in Watson's room that was stuck to the magnet. When Watson pulled the spring open, it vibrated.
At the same time, Bell was surprised to find that the spring on the telegraph machine in his room vibrated and made a sound. It was the current that transmitted the vibration from one room to another.
Bell's mind suddenly opened up, and he thought: If a person speaks to a piece of iron, the sound will cause the iron piece to vibrate; if an electromagnet is placed behind the iron piece, the iron piece will vibrate. Vibration is bound to produce a current that is large and small in the electromagnet coil.
This fluctuating current is transmitted to a distant place along the wire. Wouldn't the same vibration occur on a similar device in the distance and make the same sound? In this way, the sound will be transmitted to a distant place along the wire. Isn't this the dream telephone?
Bell and Watson made a telephone according to the new idea. During an experiment, a drop of sulfuric acid splashed on Bell's leg, causing him to shout in pain: "Mr. Watson, I need you, please come to me!" This sentence was transmitted to Watson's ears from the telephone through the wire. Here, the call was successful! On March 7, 1876, Bell became the patentee of the telephone invention.
Bell obtained 18 patents in his life and collaborated with others to obtain 12 patents. He envisioned burying telephone wires underground or suspending them in the air, and using them to connect homes, villages, factories... In this way, direct phone calls could be made anywhere. Today, Bell's vision has long become a reality.
3. Penicillin has been widely used in medicine now. It can kill bacteria and eliminate inflammation and infection. Maybe you don’t know that penicillin was discovered by chance!
In September 1928, the British bacteriologist Fleming was working on the study of Staphylococcus aureus, which was a Bacteria that can make people sick. In order to investigate the living habits and pathogenic mechanism of this pathogen, they need to be cultured and observed.
The equipment at that time was relatively simple, and the work was carried out in a hot and humid old house. During the experiment, the petri dishes needed to be opened many times, and the cultures in the dishes were easily contaminated. Once, Fleming opened a petri dish to observe bacteria, and accidentally discovered that blue-green mold grew on the mouth of the petri dish. Next to the mold, staphylococci were dissolved, and clear water droplets appeared.
Why can blue-green mold inhibit the growth of bacteria and eliminate them? Fleming clung to this "accidental" discovery and went all out to study this blue-green mold. After conducting research on mold, they finally found penicillin, the nemesis of Staphylococcus aureus, and further discovered that it also has a killing effect on some other bacteria.
In 1945, Fleming, who discovered penicillin, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine together with the British pathologist Flory and the German chemist Chain, who developed the chemical preparation of penicillin.
4. Penaiditus is a famous French chemist. An accidental opportunity triggered his inspiration, which led him to research and make "safety glass".
That was in 1907. One day, Penneditus was arranging instruments in the laboratory and accidentally knocked a glass bottle to the ground. It's over now! The floor of the laboratory is paved with stones. If a glass bottle is dropped, won't it break into pieces?
However, surprisingly, the bottle did not break into pieces, but only had some cracks. He took out another washed bottle and gently threw it to the ground. This time, the glass bottle was smashed to pieces. Why were the conditions of the two bottles so different? Pennedytus could not find the answer for a while.
A few days later, a car accident was written off in the newspaper. The flying glass shards injured the passengers, which made Penneditus deeply saddened. He couldn't help but think of the broken but not broken bottle, and was determined to get to the bottom of it.
He found the bottle again and looked carefully. It turned out that it was a bottle that had contained some kind of potion. After the potion evaporated, a tough and transparent film formed on the inner surface of the bottle. It seemed that , it is this film that protects the bottle.
The "accidental" discovery prompted him to further study glass coatings. After many experiments, he finally found a suitable coating with strong adhesion and good transparency. Later, he used paint to bond the two layers of glass together and found that it was better at preventing breakage. In this way, "safety glass" was finally born.
5. Today, carpenters use hand tools such as saws, drills, planes, shovels, and rulers. According to legend, the ink fountain used for drawing lines was invented by Lu Ban.
The invention of every tool was researched by Luban through repeated trials in production practice.
Take the invention of the saw as an example. Once, the king ordered Luban to cut down 300 beams and columns within fifteen days to build a large palace. So Lu Ban took his disciples up the mountain. They got up early and stayed late, wielded their axes, and chopped down for ten days in a row. They were all exhausted, and in the end they only chopped down about a hundred big trees.
At this time, the bricks and stones were all ready, and the auspicious day chosen by the king to start construction was about to expire. If the lumber is not ready when starting work, it will be punished by death. What should we do? At night, Lu Ban lay on the bed tossing and turning, unable to sleep. He got up and walked up the mountain. Looking up, the morning star blinked at him, it was almost dawn.
Suddenly, Lu Ban felt that his hand was scratched by something. He raised his hand and saw that his calloused hand had a cut and blood seeped out. He looked around carefully and found that it was made of silk thatch.
Luban was surprised. He picked a blade of grass and found that there were many sharp teeth on the edge of the blade. When he turned around, he saw another big locust opening its two big fangs and eating grass blades quickly. Lu Ban caught a locust and saw that it also had sharp teeth on its fangs. Looking at the leaves of the silk grass and the large teeth of the locust, he suddenly felt enlightened.
He made a strip of bamboo from moso bamboo, with many saw teeth carved on it like silk grass leaves and locust slats. Use it to pull the tree, and the bark will break after just a few blows. With more force, a deep groove will appear in the trunk.
However, over time, the saw teeth on the bamboo pieces were either pure or broken. At this time, Luban thought of Tie. He ran down the mountain and asked the blacksmith to cut a sawtooth iron bar based on the bamboo pieces he made, and used it to pull down the tree. It was really fast!
This iron bar is the ancestor of the saw. With it, Lu Ban and his apprentices cut down 300 beams and columns in only thirteen days.
Lu Ban is a carpenter and works with wood all day long. He is very skilled and is particularly good at using an axe. He can chop wood into the desired shape in just a few strokes. The saying "Everyone is trying to wield an ax" means that anyone who wants to wield an ax in front of Lu Ban is overestimating his ability. It can be seen from this that Lu Ban is proficient in using an axe.
However, Luban couldn't chop the wood smooth with an axe, especially when it came to wood with thick grain and many knots. In order to solve this problem, Lu Ban thought about it during the day and at night. He first made a thin axe, which he sharpened quickly. The cutting was much better than before, but it was still not ideal.
So Luban sharpened a small, thin axe, and covered it with a piece of iron, leaving only a narrow blade exposed. This time, Luban didn't cut it. He pushed against the wood with the narrow blade.
With one push, the wood was pushed down and a thin layer of wood chips came out. After pushing for more than a dozen times, the surface of the wood was flat and smooth, which was much better than using an ax to chop in the past. But when I hold this thing in my hand and push it, it gets stuck in my hand and makes it hard to use it. Luban made another wooden base and placed it inside. This is how the plane was born.
When Lu Ban was doing carpentry work, he often encountered right angles. Although he had a moment on hand for drawing right angles, it was quite troublesome to use it. After Luban improved it, he made an "L" shaped wooden ruler, which was very convenient for measuring right angles!
Later, people called it Luban Ruler. Because Lu Ban made such a great contribution to the improvement of woodworking tools, carpenters have respectfully called him their ancestor for more than two thousand years.