Mary Gribbin - Science - A History in 100 Experiments

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

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London SE1 9GF

www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com

This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2016

Text © John and Mary Gribbin 2016

Photographs © individual copyright holders

John and Mary Gribbin assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work

Edited by Patricia Briggs

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 978-0-00-814560-6

Ebook Edition © October 2016 ISBN: 9780008145613

Version: 2016-09-22

COVER

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

INTRODUCTION

1THE UPWARD THRUST OF WATER

2MEASURING THE DIAMETER OF THE EARTH

3THE EYE AS A PINHOLE CAMERA

4DISSECTING THE HUMAN BODY

5MEASURING THE MAGNETIC FIELD OF THE EARTH

6MEASURING INERTIA

7CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD

8WEIGHING THE ATMOSPHERE

9RESISTING THE SQUEEZE

10REVEALING THE MICROSCOPIC WORLD

11ALL THE COLOURS OF THE RAINBOW

12THE SPEED OF LIGHT IS FINITE

13VITAMIN AT SEA

14CONDUCTING THE LIGHTNING

15THE HEAT OF ICE

16STEAMING AHEAD

17BREATHING PLANTS AND PURE AIR

18OPENING UP THE SOLAR SYSTEM

19ANIMAL HEAT, BUT NO ANIMAL MAGIC

20TWITCHING FROGS AND ELECTRIC PILES

21WEIGHING THE EARTH

22BORING EXPERIMENTS ON HEAT

23THE FIRST VACCINE

24FEELING INVISIBLE LIGHT

25COSMIC RUBBLE

26FLYING HIGH WITH HYDROGEN

27LIGHT IS A WAVE

28DISCOVERING ATOMS

29ELECTRIFYING SCIENCE

30QUANTIFYING CHEMISTRY

31THINKING ABOUT THE POWER OF FIRE

32A RANDOM WALK

33THE MAGNETISM OF ELECTRICITY

34THE DEATH OF VITALISM

35MAKING ELECTRICITY

36AN UPLIFTING EXPERIENCE

37BLOOD HEAT

38TRUMPETERS ON A TRAIN

39THE SPEED OF ICE

40ABSORBING RADIANT HEAT

41THE LEVIATHAN OF PARSONSTOWN

42CONTROVERSY AND CONTROLS

43FROM FIRE LIGHT TO STAR LIGHT

44PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN CURE

45PINNING DOWN THE SPEED OF LIGHT

46DEATH TO BACTERIA

47THE FLOWERING OF EVOLUTION THEORY

48THE BENZENE SNAKE DANCE

49THE MONK AND THE PEAS

50THE IMPORTANCE OF NOTHING

51FEELING THE SQUEEZE

52THE SPEED OF LIGHT IS CONSTANT

53SPARKING RADIO INTO LIGHT

54NOBLE GASES AND A NOBLE LORD

55THE BIRTH OF BIOCHEMISTRY

56ENTER THE X-RAY

57ENTER THE ELECTRON

58RADIOACTIVITY REVEALED

59KNOCKING ELECTRONS WITH LIGHT

60A PAVLOVIAN RESPONSE

61JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH

62INSIDE THE ATOM

63A RULER FOR THE UNIVERSE

64THE DISCOVERY OF NUCLEIC ACIDS

65EVOLUTION AT WORK

66SOMETHING TO BRAG ABOUT

67LIGHT FROM THE DARKNESS

68ELECTRON WAVES AND QUANTUM DUALITY

69TAKING THE ROUGH WITH THE SMOOTH

70AN ANTIBIOTIC BREAKTHROUGH

71SPLITTING THE ATOM

72MAKING VITAMIN C

73PROBING PROTEINS

74ARTIFICIAL RADIOACTIVITY

75THE CAT IN THE BOX

76FISSION GETS HEAVY

77THE FIRST NUCLEAR REACTOR

78THE FIRST PROGRAMMABLE COMPUTER

79DISCOVERING THE ROLE OF DNA

80JUMPING GENES

81THE ALPHA HELIX

82A BLEND OF DNA

83THE DOUBLE HELIX

84MAKING THE MOLECULES OF LIFE

85MASERS AND LASERS

86MAGNETIC STRIPES AND SEA-FLOOR SPREADING

87DETECTING THE GHOST PARTICLE

88A VITAL VITAMIN

89THE BREATHING PLANET

90THE ECHO OF THE BIG BANG

91CLOCKING ON TO RELATIVITY

92MAKING WAVES IN THE UNIVERSE

93THE PACEMAKER OF ICE AGES

94THE WORLD IS NON-LOCAL

95THE ULTIMATE QUANTUM EXPERIMENT

96THE ACCELERATING UNIVERSE

97MAPPING THE HUMAN GENOME

98FIFTEEN EQUALS THREE TIMES FIVE

99MAKING MATTER MASSIVE

100THE COMPOSITION OF THE UNIVERSE

EXPERIMENT 101

REFERENCES

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

© NASA/Science Photo Library

Astronaut working on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) during a routine servicing mission.

© Caltech/MIT/Ligo Labs/Science Photo Library

LIGO gravitational wave detector. Aerial photograph of the Livingston detector site for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). LIGO compares measurements between two detector sites 3000 kilometres apart, one near Hanford, Washington, USA, and the other near Livingston, Louisiana, USA. Each site is an L-shaped ultra-high vacuum system, four kilometres long on each side. Laser interferometers are used to look for small changes caused by gravitational waves. LIGO has been operating since 2002, with an advanced upgrade (aLIGO) operating since 2015. On 11 February 2016 it was announced that gravitational waves had been detected by LIGO. The signal was detected on 14 September 2015, and was the result of two black holes colliding.