Every scientist fails sometimes. Now, I will look at the story of scientists.
Story 1:
Boyle's skeptical chemist
Boyle was born in an aristocratic family in Ireland on1October 25th. My father is an earl and his family is very rich. He is the youngest of the fourteen brothers. Boyle was not particularly smart when he was a child, and he stuttered a little. He doesn't like lively games very much, but he is studious and likes reading and thinking quietly. Received a good education since childhood, and studied in Europe from 1639 to 1644. During this period, he read many natural science books, including the famous book Dialogue between Two World Systems by astronomer and physicist Galileo. This book left a deep impression on him. His later masterpiece The Doubtful Chemist was based on this book.
Due to the war, his father died and his family came down. He returned to China to live in London with his sister in 1644. I started studying medicine and agriculture there. I was exposed to a lot of chemical knowledge and experiments, and soon became a well-trained chemical experimenter and creative theorist. During this period, he organized a scientific society with many scholars and held a weekly seminar, mainly discussing the latest development of natural science and the problems encountered in the laboratory. Boyle called this organization an "invisible university". This society is the predecessor of the famous "Royal Society", and its purpose is to promote the development of natural science. Boyle is an important member of the association. Boyle moved to Oxford on 1654 because the branch of the society was located in Oxford. In Oxford, he set up a well-equipped laboratory and hired some talented scholars as assistants to lead them in various scientific research. Many of his scientific research achievements were obtained here. The epoch-making masterpiece "Skeptical Chemist" is written here. In the genre of dialogue, this book writes four philosophers arguing together. They are skeptical chemists, bardic chemists, medical chemists and philosophers. Bard chemists represent Aristotle's view of "four elements", medical chemists represent the view of "three elements", and philosophers remain neutral in the debate. Here, skeptical chemists have no fear to challenge all kinds of authoritative traditional theories in history, refuting many old ideas with vivid and powerful arguments and putting forward new ones. This book is widely circulated in continental Europe.
Boyle attaches great importance to experimental research. He believes that only experiment and observation are the basis of scientific thinking. He always clarifies his views through rigorous and scientific experiments. In physics, he studied the color of light, the elasticity of vacuum and air, and summarized Boyle's gas law. In chemistry, his research on acid, alkali and indicator, and his discussion on the qualitative test method of salt are quite effective. He was the first chemist to use the juices of various natural plants as indicators. He invented litmus test solution and litmus test paper. He was also the first chemist to give a clear definition of acid and alkali, and divided substances into three categories: acid, alkali and salt. He created many qualitative methods to test salt, such as using copper salt solution to be blue, adding ammonia solution to become dark blue (copper ions and enough ammonia water form copper-ammonia complex ions) to test copper salt; The white precipitate produced by mixing hydrochloric acid and silver nitrate solution is used to test silver salt and hydrochloric acid. Boyle's invention is full of long-term vitality, so that we still often use these oldest methods today. Boyle has also done many experiments in determining the composition and purity of substances, and studying the similarities and differences of substances. A brief review of the history of mineral water experimental research published by 1685 describes a set of methods to identify substances and becomes a pioneer in qualitative analysis.
1668, due to the death of his brother-in-law, he moved to London to live with his sister, and set up a laboratory in his backyard to continue his experimental work. Boyle's work in his later years mainly focused on the study of phosphorus. 1670, Boyle suffered a stroke due to fatigue, and his physical condition was good and bad. When he can't do research in the laboratory, he devotes himself to sorting out the knowledge gained from practice and reasoning for many years. As long as he feels a little light, he goes to the laboratory to do his experiments or write papers for fun. 1680, he was elected president of the royal society, but he refused to accept this honor. Although he was born into a noble family, he devoted his life to scientific research and life. He never married and devoted his life to exploring natural science. 169 165438 On February 30th, the scientist who laid the foundation of chemical science in17th century died in London. Engels once gave him the highest evaluation: "Boyle identified chemistry as science."
Story 2:
Priestley —— Father of Gas Chemistry
Priestley 1733 was born in Leeds, England on March 13, and was raised by poor relatives. He entered the seminary on 175. After graduation, he spent most of his time as a priest, and chemistry was his hobby. He has many works in chemistry, electricity, natural philosophy and theology. He wrote many smug theological works, but it was his scientific works that made him immortal. 1764, when he was 3 1 years old, he wrote the history of electricity. At that time, it was a famous book. Because of its publication, he was elected as a member of the Royal Society at 1766.
1722, when he was 39 years old, he wrote a history of optics. It is also a masterpiece of 18 century. At that time, on the one hand, he served as a priest in Leeds, on the other hand, he began to engage in chemical research. His research on gases is quite effective. He used the generated hydrogen to study the effect of this gas on various metal oxides. In the same year, priestley also burned charcoal in a closed container and found that it could turn one-fifth of the air into carbonic acid gas. After being absorbed by lime water, the remaining gas does not help to burn or breathe. Because he believed in phlogiston, he called this residual gas "air saturated with phlogiston". Obviously, he used charcoal combustion and alkali absorption to remove oxygen and carbonic acid gas from the air and make nitrogen. In addition, he discovered nitric oxide and used it to analyze air. Hydrogen chloride, ammonia, sulfurous acid gas (carbon dioxide), nitrous oxide, oxygen and other gases have also been found or studied. 1766, his experiment and observation of several gases was published in three volumes. This book describes in detail the preparation or properties of various gases. Because of his outstanding achievements in gas research, he is called "the father of gas chemistry".
The most important thing in gas research is the discovery of oxygen. 1774, priestley put mercury soot (mercury oxide) into a glass dish and heated it with a condenser, and found that it quickly decomposed into gas. He thinks that the air has been released, so he collects the generated gas by gas collection and studies it. He found that the gas made the candle burn more brightly, and he felt relaxed and comfortable breathing. He made oxygen, and proved through experiments that oxygen has the properties of combustion-supporting and breathing. However, because he is a stubborn believer in phlogiston, he still thinks that air is a single gas, so he also calls this gas "dephosphorized air". The difference between its nature and the "air saturated with phlogiston" (nitrogen) discovered earlier is only the difference in phlogiston content, so its combustion-supporting ability is also different. In the same year, he visited Europe, exchanged many chemical views with lavoisier in Paris, and told lavoisier about the experiment of decomposing mercury and silver ash with condenser, which benefited lavoisier a lot. Lavoisier just repeated priestley's experiment about oxygen, and linked it with a large number of accurate experimental materials, made scientific analysis and judgment, and revealed the real connection between combustion and air. But it was not until 1783 that lavoisier's theory of combustion oxidation was generally considered to be correct. Priestley still refused to accept lavoisier's explanation, insisted on the wrong phlogiston theory, and wrote many articles against lavoisier's opinion. This is an interesting fact in the history of chemistry. A person who discovered oxygen became a person who opposed the theory of oxidation. However, priestley found that oxygen is an important factor in the vigorous development of chemistry. So chemists all over the world still respect Priestley.
179 1 year, he sympathized with the French revolution and made propaganda speeches for the revolution many times, but he was persecuted by some people, his home was copied, and books and experimental equipment were set on fire. He escaped alone and took refuge in London, but it was difficult for him to live in London for a long time. At the age of 6 1, he had to immigrate to the United States. Continue to engage in scientific research in the United States. 1804 is dead. People in Britain and America respect him very much, and England has a full-length statue of him. In the United States, the house where he lived has been built into a memorial hall, and the priestley Medal named after him has become the highest honor in American chemistry.
Story 3:
Madame Curie
Marie Curie (Madame Curie) was a French-born Polish physicist and chemist.
1898, French physicist AntoineHenriBecquerel discovered that uranium-containing substances can emit a mysterious ray, but failed to reveal the mystery of this ray. Mary and her husband Pierrecurie)*** * * undertook the work of studying this kind of radiation. They separated and analyzed pitchblende under extremely difficult conditions, and finally found two new elements in July 1898 and February 12.
To commemorate her native Poland, she named one element polonium and the other element radium, which means "radioactive substance". In order to prepare pure radium compounds, it took Madame Curie another four years (MarieCuI7e, 1867- 1934) to extract1o0mg of radium chloride from several tons of pitchblende residue, and the relative atomic mass of radium was preliminarily determined to be 225. This simple figure embodies the hard work and sweat of the Curie couple.
1In June, 903, Madame Curie took "Research on Radioactive Substances" as her doctoral thesis and obtained a doctorate in physics from the University of Paris. In June165438+1October of the same year, the Curies were awarded the David Gold Medal by the Royal Society. In February 65438, together with Bekkerel, they won the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics.
1906, pierre curie died in a car accident. This heavy blow did not make her give up her persistent pursuit. She fought back her grief and redoubled her efforts to complete their beloved scientific career. She continued her husband's lecture at the University of Paris and became the first female professor at the university. 19 10, her famous book on radioactivity was published. She cooperated with Mou and others to analyze pure metal radium and measure its properties. She also measured the half-lives of oxygen and other elements and published a series of important works on radioactivity. In view of the above great achievements, she won the Nobel Prize in chemistry at 19 1 1, becoming the first great scientist to win the Nobel Prize twice in history.
The founder of radiation science, who suffered from scientific hardships, died unfortunately on July 4, 1934 on/kloc-0 because of years of efforts. She devoted her glorious life to the scientific cause of mankind.
Darwin explored the biological chain
1843 one day in late spring, a young man in his early thirties walked out of a small town called Dunn, which was more than 0/0 kilometers away from London, England. He is a biologist Darwin.
It's a sunny day, and some beautiful butterflies and bees are flying around in the fields full of flowers. Darwin went straight to the clover field full of pink flowers. He came to observe, analyze and study the cereal plants in the field.
Darwin first observed the flowers of clover. He wants to see how these flowers breed. Who is their matchmaker? Darwin saw many soil bees flying around the clover. Some soil bees stopped on the flowers and were inserting their nectar-sucking organs deeply into the nectaries of stamens to suck nectar. He knows that these bumblebees are matchmakers, helping clover pollinate and reproduce. Darwin observed for several days and saw that there were many bees this year. In summer, clover bears many seeds. Clover harvest.
The following spring, Darwin went to observe again. He found that few native bees collected honey in clover fields this year; When harvesting in summer, the seeds of clover are also greatly reduced; Clover is not harvested. This is obviously because there are fewer soil bees, which reduces the opportunity to pollinate clover. He was thinking again: Why are there fewer ground bees this year? So, Darwin pursued the native bee again. Finally, he found a beehive in some rock holes and tree holes. At the same time, he made a new discovery-many beehives were eaten up and destroyed by rats. In this way, Darwin understood that it is the number of mice that determines the number of ground bees. The more rats there are, the more hives it destroys and the fewer bumblebees there are.
Later Darwin observed that the number of mice is determined by the number of cats. Clover, bees, mice and cats, seemingly completely unrelated animals and plants, have such an interesting and complicated relationship. In this way, according to the mutual restriction and interdependence between organisms, after further in-depth observation and research, Darwin finally wrote the origin of species and other masterpieces, and became an outstanding scientist and the founder of biological evolution theory in the world in the19th century.
Edison, the king of invention
Telegraph, telephone and electric light are so common and common in today's advanced technology that no one will be surprised. But do you know how important these things were to people at that time and how ecstatic they were? Humans thus remembered their inventor-Edison.
Edison, known as the "King of Invention", is a famous American scientist and inventor. In his life, there were 1328 inventions registered in the patent office alone. How can a person who has only studied for three months have so many inventions? I think, if you have heard the story of "Edison incubating chickens", you will understand that his success stems from strong curiosity.
1847, Edison was born in a merchant family in Milan, Ohio, USA. Edison showed great curiosity when he was very young. Whenever he sees something he doesn't understand, he grabs the adult's skirts and keeps asking questions, insisting on asking ugly questions.
One day, he pointed to the hen that was hatching eggs and asked his mother, "Why is the hen sitting under her ass?" Mother said, "Oh, that's a chicken!" " "In the afternoon, Edison suddenly disappeared, and the family was anxious to look around and finally found him in the henhouse. It turned out that he was squatting in a chicken coop with a lot of eggs under his ass to hatch chickens! When his parents saw it, they were so distressed that they had to pull him out and wash his face and clothes. Another time, when he saw birds flying freely in the sky, he thought: Since birds can fly, why can't people fly? So, he found a kind of powder for his friends to eat, in order to let them fly into the sky. As a result, the little friend almost died, and Edison was severely beaten by his father.
Finally, Eddie grew up to 8 years old, and his parents sent him to a rural primary school, thinking that he could go to school safely from now on. Who knows, he still loves to get to the bottom of it, and often asks the teacher dumbfounded and embarrassed. Once in an arithmetic class, the teacher wrote "2+2=4" on the blackboard. Edison immediately stood up and asked, "Teacher, why is 2 plus 2 equal to 4?" This question puzzled the teacher. He thinks Edison is a troublemaker and always disagrees with his teacher. So Edison attended classes for three months and was driven home by the teacher.
Edison's mother is a great mother. She didn't blame her only son for being driven back. Instead, he decided to educate the child himself. When she found Edison curious and particularly interested in physics and chemistry, she bought him books about physics and chemistry experiments. Edison started the experiment on his own according to books. It can be said that this is Edison's enlightenment education in scientific inventions.
When he grew up, Edison learned radio transmitting and receiving technology. He got a job as a night shift operator at Stratford Railway Sub-bureau. According to the regulations, the night shift operator must send a signal to the train service director every hour after 9 pm, no matter what happens. In order to have a good rest at night and study and invent during the day, Edison designed a telegraph that can automatically send signals on time. This is the prototype of the telegram.
Soon after, he improved the telegraph. After many tests, a new type of telegraph was successfully trial-produced. Edison looked at the machine he invented and smiled with relief.
There is an optician named Yang in Holland who is busy grinding lenses every day.
One day, naughty children went to the second floor to play with their polished lenses. A child folded two lenses to see things and shouted in surprise:
"It's strange, how did the bell tower come into being so far away?"
The children looked at each other in turn and cried in surprise.
Yang heard the children's shouts, ran upstairs, looked at the overlapping shots, and was suddenly shocked: it was clearly in the distant bell tower, how could it suddenly run over?
The children's unexpected discovery aroused Yang's interest in research. After constant research and improvement, he finally invented the telescope.
Excerpt from The King of Skillful Hands
Galileo came to the Leaning Tower of Pisa with two balls of different weights. There are already many people watching under the tower. In an exclamation, they stared at Galileo closely, and two balls in his hand fell from the top of the tower at the same time. "They landed together." People shouted loudly.
This story was told by my teacher in class when I was in primary school. Now, I know that the story mentioned by Vianne, a student in Galileo's later years, is just a lie.
The course of science has opened a real historical process of science for us. For this matter, the book "The Course of Science" talked about it. According to the research of historians of science, there is no reason to show that Galileo did this experiment, and Galileo himself never mentioned this experiment. Before Galileo, someone had done such an experiment. 1856, Stevin, a Dutch physicist, made two shot puts with different sizes and the weight ratio of 1 to 10 fall from a height of 30 feet. As a result, two balls landed on the board on the ground almost at the same time. Galileo may have heard of this experiment, or he may have done it himself, but the result can be imagined.
In fact, in order to refute Galileo, an Aristotelian physicist really did an experiment at the Leaning Tower of Pisa in 16 12. As a result, objects with the same material but different weights will not reach the ground at the same time. Galileo defended this, which means that two objects weighing 1 are only a small distance from each other when they fall, but Aristotle said that the difference is 10 times. Why ignore Aristotle's big mistake and stare at my small one? This defense can also show that Galileo did not do the famous decisive experiment of the leaning tower of Pisa. If he does this experiment, he is asking for it.
But why did Galileo's students make up this lie? After reading the introduction of modern scientific methodology in chapter 18 of the book, I suddenly realized. Galileo and Newton truly represent the spirit of modern scientific methodology. Galileo first advocated and practiced the method of "experiment plus teaching". However, Galileo's experiment is not an observation experiment in Bacon's sense, but an idealized experiment. It is impossible to avoid the influence of friction in any mechanical experiment on the earth, but to understand the basic laws of mechanics, we must first exclude friction conceptually. Only this idealized experiment can be worthy of teaching treatment.
It turns out that this experiment is just an "ideal experiment" in the mind. As far as an ideal experiment is concerned, it is of course true. This is the so-called "true lie".
Father of Glider-Otto Lilienthal
Lilienthal is a German engineer, glider and one of the pioneers of aviation in the world. He first designed and manufactured a practical glider, and was called "the father of gliders".
Lilienthal was born in Ancram on May 23rd, 1948, and died in Berlin on August 30th, 1996. He likes flying very much. As a teenager, he did the "flying man" experiment. As an adult, he used his spare time to systematically observe birds. From 65438 to 0889, Lilienthal wrote the famous book "Bird's Flight-Aviation Basis", and discussed the characteristics of bird's flight.
Lilienthal is good at making instruments and conducting aerial experiments to verify the observation results. His instruments for testing the lift and drag of sheet objects and the lift of flapping-wing aircraft are both representative aviation research instruments at the end of19th century.
Lilienthal paid attention to accumulating data and summing up experience, corrected the one-sided practice of "multi-layer narrow wing", and put forward the view that "curved wing has greater lift than plane wing" for the first time, which made a decisive contribution to the success of aircraft invention.
Lilienthal's main contribution is the successful taxiing flight. 189 1 year, he made a bat-shaped bow-wing glider and glided successfully, thus affirming the rationality of the curved wing. During the three years from 1893 to 1896, Lilienthal carried out more than 2,000 gliding flight tests, improved the overall layout three times, took many photos during the gliding process, accumulated a lot of data, and compiled a pressure data table based on this, which provided valuable information for aircraft manufacturers in the United States, Britain, France and other countries.
1894, Lilienthal took off from the cliff near Berlin and successfully glided 350 meters (1 150 feet), which was an amazing achievement at that time. He carefully recorded his achievements, making it one of the earliest aircraft performance records in aviation history.
However, Lilienthal paid too much attention to the lift and neglected the control of the aircraft. He thinks that changing the position of the body center of gravity is the only way to keep the plane stable, and this mistake is fatal to him. On 1896, Lilienthal suddenly encountered a gust of wind during the flight. He fell to the ground with the plane before he could move his center of gravity forward to make the glider bow.
Lilienthal died on the day of the car accident. In order to commemorate his achievements, the Germans set up a monument for Lilienthal, which read "the greatest teacher".
Baird, the inventor of television
/kloc-one day in 0/929, when the British first saw the TV picture, they were all in high spirits and rushed to tell each other. Among them, TV inventor Baird (1888— 1946) shed tears with excitement.
Born in England, Baird was sickly since childhood, and was almost killed by illness many times. However, his physical weakness tempered his courage and perseverance to overcome difficulties. After graduating from college, he worked in an electrical company. He was meticulous in his work and repaired several machines that were almost eliminated in a short time, which was highly valued by the company.
Ruthless illness pestered him, and he had to resign to recuperate. 1923 one day, a friend told him, "Since Marconi can transmit and receive radio waves from a long distance, he should be able to transmit images." This greatly encouraged him. Baird is determined to complete the task of "transmitting images by electricity". He sold a little of his property, collected a lot of information and devoted all his time to the development of TV sets. Finally, he finished the design of the TV set.
It is not easy to turn the design into a physical prototype. A small room is both a bedroom and a studio Although the disease tormented him, he still worked doggedly, often fighting day and night, eating bread when he was hungry, sleeping with clothes for a while when he was sleepy, and replacing it with old tea boxes, old caps and knitting needles when he had no money to buy experimental equipment.
After a long period of hard struggle and numerous failures, Baird finally put the image of people on the screen with electrical signals. 1929, the BBC allowed Baird to provide public television broadcasting services. After 1930s, Baird turned to the research of color TV and achieved some results.
Pascal proves vacuum
When people first arrived in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, they had difficulty breathing, but the condition of heart patients worsened and the mortality rate of newborn babies increased. Why is this? A Frenchman named Pascal (1623- 1662) first discovered the mystery. It turns out that with the increase of altitude, the air becomes thinner and the atmospheric pressure decreases, which makes the average person unable to adapt.
Pascal has been very clever since he was a child. He fell in love with mathematics at the age of 12, joined the group of mathematicians and physicists in Paris at the age of 16, proposed mathematical theorems at the age of 17, and designed and manufactured the first mechanical computing machine in history at the age of 20. Although he didn't live to be 40 years old, he made an important contribution to science.
Pascal made the greatest contribution to physics. At the age of 22, he devoted himself to the study of vacuum and hydrostatics, and made great achievements, which became a great event in Paris at that time. His experiments prove that vacuum does exist, air does have weight, and atmospheric pressure is universal.
Pascal also did many experiments on liquid pressure in different areas and at different heights, which proved that the atmospheric pressure decreased with the increase of height. This discovery is widely used in earth science research and even today's aviation technology. Pascal also invented the syringe through the above experiments and improved the mercury barometer in Torricelli.
Pascal wrote a paper "Discussion on Liquid Equilibrium", in which the transfer of liquid pressure was discussed in detail. This paper was not made public until after his death, which is the famous Pascal's law. Pascal also pointed out that due to the weight of the liquid, the pressure on the wall of the container containing the liquid is only related to the depth of the liquid. In memory of him, people set the unit of pressure as Pascal, or Pa for short.