Science

We’ve all heard of DNA haven’t we, well this lady, Rosalind Franklin, was the first lady to start the research into it.

Rosalind Franklin was born in 1920 in London, and although her father disapproved of her going to university, she went to Cambridge and earned a PhD in physical chemistry.

The big unanswered question of that era was “What is the shape of DNA?”.

Even though scientists knew that DNA formed the building blocks of the body they had no idea what it looked like and so started Rosalind Franklin’s research in King’s College.

She spent many hours using an X-ray on delicate fibres of DNA, capturing a famous photo proving DNA is a double helix.

It is now understood that two other scientists named James Watson and Francis Crick were also trying to fathom out what DNA was made up of and they secretly looked at Rosalind Franklin’s research without her knowledge or permission.

They later published their findings along with Rosalind’s work and but crucially did not credit her.

After that incident Rosalind left King’s College and went to work at a top research lab, where she moved on to research the tobacco mosaic and polio viruses.

She also research the use of charcoal to be used in gas masks during WWII.

She died very young at the age of 37 years old from cancer in 1958.

Watson and Crick won a Nobel Prize four years later for their research and work into DNA, but it came to light that they had used some of Rosalind Franklin’s data and she is now known as one of the pioneer’s into the research of the “shape of DNA”.

Rather confusingly, a light year is actually a measurement of distance not time.

A light year shows the distance that light travels through a year, and travels at an incredible speed of 300,000 kilometres a second.  It is possible for a light year to travel around the circumference of the Earth 7.5 times per second.

So one light year measures just under 10 million kilometres.  On average it takes light 8.3 minutes to travel from the Sun to the Earth.

The nearest star is 4.2 light years away and the Andromeda Galaxy is the nearest large galaxy outside our own and is about 2.5 million light years away.

The Andromeda Galaxy can actually be seen from the United Kingdom and it has looks like an elongated fuzzy blob to the naked eye.

The Hubble Telescope has detected an object in space which is believed to be around 13.2 billion light years away.  In the time it’s taken the light to reach us on Earth the original object, a compact mini galaxy would no longer exist.

When a star dies, it does so in a spectacular way by a Supernova explosion.

This is what happened back in 1054 AD when ancient astronomers from China, Japan and Arabia witnessed such an explosion that lasted 23 days.

The remains of this supernova explosion can still be seen today and they named the remaining object “Crab Nebula”.

The core of a massive star which explodes is compacted into super dense objects known as a neutron star, and believe it or not this has a mass greater than the Sun, which is usually compacted into a sphere shape the size of a city.

A cup of neutron star material outweighs the largest mountain on Earth.

The Crab Nebula’s neutron star sends out an energetic beam of radiation and spins 30 times every second, and this type of object is known as a pulsar.  Here on Earth, we can usually see a pulse every time the beam spins past our line of sight.

A star’s colour will indicate it’s temperature, but unusually, it is opposite to what we use on Earth, as Red signifies the star at it’s coolest whilst blue shows the star at its hottest.  The star’s spectral type is the way astronomers classify a star’s colour and temperature.

The Crab Nebula is about 6,500 light-years away from the Earth, and is 5 light-years across.

Here are some random facts about various science related inventions used in the world today.

When was the first attempt to propel a ship by water-jet propulsion?
It was in 1782, on the Potomac River in the United States. This followed a suggestion of Benjamin Franklin’s that a ship with a pump mounted at the bows could suck in water and expel it via a tube at the stern, thus propelling it forwards.

Who invented the pneumatic tyre?
In 1845, Robert Thomson, a London engineer invented the rubber tyre which was filled with air, but the first successful pneumatic tyre was devised by John Dunlop, a Scottish veterinary surgeon working in Ireland in 1888.

Who first produced a striking match?
It was probably the Hon. Robert Boyle, called the father of modern chemistry. With his assistant Godfrey Haukewitz, they carried out some experiments with phosphorus and sulphur, and this was the start of the idea of a striking match.

Who first devised the universal joint?
Robert Hooke, a well-known English physicist (1635-1703) invented the helioscope, which is an instrument used for examining the sun through a system of reflecting glasses, making it safe to look at it and he suggested that this should be operated by a means of ‘universal joint’. This was a metal joint that made it possible to communicate motion in all directions.

When was the first lawn mower invented?
The first to be patented was by Edwin Budding, a Gloucestershire gardener in 1830. His 51cm (20 inch) roller mower looked a lot like today’s push grass cutter.

When was the first telegraph operated by electrical current set up?
W.F.Cooke an amateur engineer and Charles (later Sir Charles) Wheatstone, a professor of experimental philosophy at King’s College in London, worked together and in 1837 the first electrical telegraph was set up.

Who invented the seed drill?
Around the 1700’s a retired lawyer named Jethro Tull from Berkshire near London, invented the first draft of the seed drill. These were changed throughout his generation but it was thought to revolutionise farming.

Who designed the first practical artificial limbs?
Around 1517-1590 a French surgeon and physician named Ambrose Paré, devised a number of well-made and practical artificial limbs for injured soldiers.

Who invented the knitting machine?
An English cleric named Reverend William Lee, invented a knitting frame during the reign of Elizabeth I. Unfortunately Lee had difficulty in getting anyone interested in making his knitting machine but after his death in 1610, his brother managed to persuade a merchant to back the idea.

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