Who Discovered It

One of the most amazing facts about tin is its usage since ancient times. There is evidence that Stone Age men used it 3,500 years ago. How the ancients discovered it is still a mystery. Discovery and History of Tin During the Late Stone Age people learned to put tin and copper together to produce bronze. Bronze was much easier to manipulate than copper and its use became widespread. This discovery ushered in the Bronze Age, which influenced the Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Indus Valley civilizations. Everything from weapons to utilities were fashioned from these materials. One of the oldest tin mining sites is in the Taurus Mountains in Turkey. An assessment of the facts about tin will show that usage of tin as a pure metal didn’t start until 600 BC. Tin was used heavily during the Medieval Ages, with Cornwall being one of the leading producers. Tin were also discovered and used in Asia. China, Laos and Indonesia were among the countries that also utilized the element. By 1931, the...

Who discovered zero? Discovery of Zero We can’t say for sure who discovered zero before anyone else. But the oldest records of its use are found in the ruins of Babylonia in circa 300 BC. The Babylonians were the first to invent a place hold number system, that is the use of a number to “compress” and cycle figures for easier counting and representation. While our modern system uses 10 as its place value, they used the number 60. This is the sexigesimal system used when counting minutes and seconds today. Babylonian Use of Zero The Babylonians, however, only used zero as a place holder. In other words, it was to clarify representation of numbers in written form. The Babylonians used cuneiform symbols called wedges and crescents to stand for numbers. To avoid confusion with large numbers (for example, 40 X 40 + 1 versus 40 + 1), they invented a zero symbol to mean a blank, a break. But they did not quite think of zero as a number. Zero and the Mayan Calendar At about 400 AD, the Mayans...

Introduction Gold is a chemical element, the most ductile and malleable of all pure metals in the world. It is found in grains or nuggets in rocks and other natural formations. Gold has a bright yellow color. The hue varies from one type of gold to another, as does its value. Arabian gold and Bangkok gold may be considered superior to Italian or Chinese gold. Nothing on earth is more fascinating and desirable to humans than gold. Because gold occurs in an uncompounded form, it was probably the first metal ever discovered and used by man. Discovery and Early Use of Gold Gold occurs in various parts of the world. No single person discovered gold but there are many traces of its use by ancient peoples. One early reference to it was made by Tushratta, a king of Mitanni (now northern Syria) in 2600 BC. He remarked that there was more gold than dust in Egypt. Such abundance of gold especially in Nubia made Egypt a rich country. By 1500 BC the metal was being used as a means of exchange in...

Introduction Taurus is one of the earliest discovered constellations in the world. It is the second sign of the Zodiac falling between Aries and Gemini. Taurus is made up of two groups of stars: the Pleiades and the Hyades. It is quite prominent in the northern hemisphere during winter. Discovery of Constellation Taurus It is not known who discovered the constellation Taurus first. But the constellation was always identified by the ancients with a bull. Some say this connection dates back to the Upper Paleolithic Era. One archeologist believes the Bull is depicted in 17,000 year old caves in Lascaux. Many references were made to Taurus in early history. The Sumerians said it rose in the sky during the spring. This suggests that the constellation was on the Vernal Equinox some 4,000 to 2,000 BC, the “Age of the Bull” in astrology. The Babylonians catalogued Taurus as “the Heavenly Bull.” The Greeks identified it with the divine bull that carried off Europa. Taurus was known to...

A proton, otherwise known as the hydrogen ion is a subatomic particle that is found in the nucleus of an atom; protons have an elementary charge of +1 and there can be one or more of them in the atom along with neutrons. A proton is made up of two up quarks and one down quark and is stable on its own and its quarks are held in place by a strong force supplied by gluon exchange particles. The discovery of the proton is attributed to Ernest Rutherford in 1919 but the discovery of the proton was a gradual process based on the work of at least three physicists: Thomson, Rutherford and Chadwick, so none of the three are solely responsible for the proton’s discovery, however it was Rutherford who first classified the proton and so he is considered the person who discovered it but it was a series of discoveries between Thomson’s discovery of the electron in 1897, Rutherford’s discovery of the nucleus in 1911, and Chadwick’s discovery of the neutron in 1932 that led to the official discovery...