Who Discovered It

Though today it is one of the most common metals in the world, there was a time when aluminum was actually one of the rarest and most precious. It took the scientists who discovered aluminum years of experimentation before they succeeded in refining this elusive element. Aluminum originates from the compound “alum,” given that name by French chemist and politician Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau in 1761. From as far back as 1787, scientists had hypothesized the existence of an unknown base metal in alum. While not quite the man who discovered aluminum, British chemist and inventor Sir Humphry Davy, can be credited for naming it (first as “alumium” before being given its current designation) in 1808. It was in 1825 when a Danish chemist and physicist named Hans Christian Oersted developed a way of extracting small amounts of aluminum from alum by having anhydrous aluminum chloride react with potassium amalgam to produce a chunk of metal with properties similar to those of tin....

From the studies that you, perhaps, have learned in school, the person credited to be the one who discovered the Pythagorean Theorem is the Greek philosopher, Pythagoras. However, there are some who say that this is not so. If you were to study the history of the theorem, you may see that it may not be Pythagoras after all who discovered the Pythagorean Theorem. The Early History Accounts of the Theorem In Northern Europe and Egypt during 2500 BC, there were some accounts pointing to an algebraic discovery of the Pytha gorean triples as expressed by Bartel Leendert van der Waerden. It was used in megalithic monuments during that time which had right triangles with integers as its sides. There were also written accounts during 2000 and 1786 BC which includes an Egyptian papyrus bearing a Pythagorean triple solution. During the circa 1750 and 1790 BC, a Mesopotamian tablet also contained many written entries which were similar to Pythagorean triples during Hammurabi the Great’s reign. India...

Most of us are familiar with the pi. Why wouldn’t we be when it is a staple of the basic math education that we get in high school? But it is safe to assume that most of us are not aware of some important facts about the pi. Familiar as the pi may be to us, questions such as ‘who discovered pi’, ‘how was the value acquired’, ‘why is it a constant’, will leave most of us dumbfounded. Knowing these facts may not be that essential for our everyday living but it won’t hurt as well especially given the fact that the pi is one of the elements that constitute the foundations of mathematics, and therefore of the modern world as well. Before we go into answering who discovered pi, let’s first tackle a little bit of historical background relevant to its discovery. As early as 1900 BC, geometers from ancient civilizations such as Babylon, India, and Egypt, are already aware of one fundamental property of the circle: that a circle’s circumference is always a little over three times...

Benoit Mandelbrot is usually credited with discovering fractals in 1975. Mandelbrot was the one who invented the word. He was also the first to represent them visually. But some facts about fractals were known to mathematicians as far back as the 17th century. Early Fractal Research A fractal can be described as a pattern that is repeated at every scale. It cannot be replicated by classical geometry. The concept of self similarity was first brought up by the philosopher and mathematician Lebinz in the 17th century. It wasn’t until 1872 before a function appropriate to be termed a fractal came into being. Karl Weierstrass showed an instance of a function that was continuous but could not be differentiated. This definition was improved upon by Helge von Koch in 1904 when he defined it as a Koch curve. A study of the facts about fractals will show it is now called the Koch snowflake. In 1915, Wallow Sierpinski created a triangle and a carpet. In 1938, Paul Levy came up with another fractal...

A study of the facts about the conch shell shows that in 1398, it was used to refer to all sea creatures with shells. However, its discovery and use is much older than that. In Mayan art, the conch was depicted as an ink container. The American aboriginals used it as an ornament. The Conch Shell as Food The conch shell’s meat can be consumed raw when eaten with salads. It can also be cooked and eaten like hamburgers. Some people find the white meat to be the most delicious part. Some East Asian culinary cuisines chop it into lean slices. It is fried or steamed. Other food facts about the conch shell will show it is eaten with soups in the West Indies. It is also a popular dish in the Bahamas. In Guam the meat is dipped in soy sauce and flavored with hot sauce or peppers. In El Salvador, the meat is flavored with onion, lemon juice and other species. In Puerto Rico it is flavored with orange juice and eaten raw. Other Uses Conch has been used as a musical instrument for a long time. Aside...