Category Inventions & Discoveries

How are diamonds formed?

Diamonds are the only gems that are made up of a single element- carbon. Natural diamonds take millions of years to form.

The diamonds that we get today were formed millions of years ago about 120-200 km below the earth’s surface.

The rocks in the earth’s upper mantle contain carbon. Due to variations in temperature, this carbon gets pushed deeper down where it melts under high temperature and pressure. When the temperature reduces, the carbon again gets solidified into a new rock.

Under perfect temperature and pressure conditions (a rare phenomenon), the carbon atoms in the molten rock get crystallised to form diamonds. If the temperature rises or the pressure drops, then the diamond crystals may melt partially or completely. Thousands of years after diamonds are formed, they are transported to the surface by volcanic eruptions.

Diamonds may also be formed due to the high pressure and temperature at the site of meteorite impacts.

How and Why do flowers develop their scent?

Flowers produce scent to attract pollinators or to keep harmful insects or animals away.

When a plant grows, it produces certain essential oils that decompose to form volatile oils. These oils are usually present in petals but they can also be found in fruits, leaves, barks and seeds. When the oil evaporates, the flower gives off smell. The type of fragrance depends on the chemical composition of the volatile oils.

No two flower species have the same scent although their colour and petal structure may look quite similar.

The purpose of the scent is to lure pollinators. Plant species pollinated by bees and flies have sweet scents, while those pollinated by beetles have musty or fruity odours. Large flowers such as Rafflesia arnoldii and Titan arum smell like decomposing corpses and the smell attracts their pollinators, the flies.

Flowers give off scent only when their prospective pollinators are most active. Thus plants like the jasmine that are pollinated by moths and bats bloom at night and emit a sweet fragrance.

While some plants emit strong scents to keep animals away, the Venus flytrap uses its scent to attract insects which are then ‘eaten’ by the plant!

 Picture Credit: Google

What is the story of Marvin C. Stone and his straws?

How do you drink your beverages, irrespective of whether they are hot or cold? Do you take swigs directly off the glass or bottle, or do you take your time and sip it slowly, using a straw for good measure? If you draw straws to sip your drinks, or even just for picking lots, you are bound to like this one.

The credit for inventing the first paper straws goes to American Marvin C. Stone. Stone was born in 1842 to Chester Stone, an inventor himself, and Rachel. He started to pursue a degree after high school when the Civil War broke out in 1861.

Serves in Civil War

Stone enlisted into service and fought gallantly, but was wounded and disabled from active duty in the Battle of Lookout Mountain. He enrolled as a music major after the war, but eventually graduated in theology. Following his marriage and years as a newspaper journalist, Stone’s inventive spirit shone through when he took to business.

His business life in the late 1870s began when he invented a machine for making paper cigarette holders. His experience with making these holders and his eye for a solution to an everyday problem, led Stone to the first paper straws.

Not the “rye” way

Stone recognised that even though using natural materials such as rye grass and reeds to make straws were popular, they had serious shortcomings. When consuming beverages using these straws, they not only added an additional flavour or taste, but also some unpleasant odour. To add to this, the grass and reeds were also prone to cracking or growing musty.

By winding strips of paper around a pencil and gluing it together, Stone had his first prototypes ready. What followed was more experimenting to make his straws more conducive for drinking.

Stone used paraffin-coated manila paper to ensure that the straws didn’t become too soggy when drinking. He also settled upon 8.5 inches as the ideal length of a straw with a diameter that was just wide enough to prevent things such as lemon seeds from lodging inside and clogging the tube.

Stone received the patent for his paper straws on January 3, 1888. Within a couple of years, Stone’s factory was producing more straws than cigarette holders. By 1896, he had patents for a machine that made artificial straw from paper. He wasn’t around to see his machines go into production in 1906, however, as he died in 1899. The success of these machines brought an end to the hand-winding process.

A kind boss

Apart from being an inventor and tinkerer, Stone was seen as a benevolent boss. A kind and generous employer, Stone looked after the comfort and moral welfare of his employees, which included female workers. The factory was equipped with a singing room and a dance floor, with a library and a meeting room for debates to boot.

The winding process that Stone pioneered with his straws had implications in other industries as well. When electrical engineers employed spiral-wound tubes for radios as they were mass-produced for the first time in the 1920s, they used a similar process. From electrical motors and apparatus to aerospace, textiles and packaging for medicine and other products, the spiral-wound tubing is now found almost everywhere.

The next time you are sipping your favourite drink, spare a thought for the man who gave us the first paper straws. And in case you are doing it with your friends or family, regale them with the story of Stone.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Who invented the ice cream cone?

 

Licking an ice cream off a cone is something that most children can’t say no to. Or even adults for that matter. One of the most delicious treats enjoyed across age groups, the origin of the cone that bears the ice cream is shrouded in mystery.

Over 2,000 years

Before we dive into the story of the cone, a little bit more about ice creams. Their origins can be traced back to over 2,000 years, but it is impossible to fix a specific date or an inventor. What we do know is that the likes of Alexander the Great (4th Century BCE) and Roman emperor Nero Claudius Caesar (1st Century CE) enjoyed these frozen treats in one form or another.

 When ice was mixed with salt, it was possible to lower and control the temperature of the mix of ingredients. This proved to be a major breakthrough in the creation of ice cream as we eat it today. While the invention of wooden bucket freezers with rotary paddles proved to be the next big thing for ice creams, their business truly became profitable and distributable when mechanical refrigeration made its way in the second half of the 19th Century.

It is believed that Menches conceived the idea of filling a pastry cone with scopps of ice cream on July, 23, 1904. According to the story on the Menches Bros. company website, Charles and Frank Menches invented the waffle cone.

It was early in the 20th Century that the cones made their way, revolutionising the way we consume ice creams. While there are many parallel claims as to who invented the ice cream cone, many accounts, including U.S.’ Library of Congress, credit American Charles E. Menches.

It is believed that Menches conceived the idea of filling a pastry cone with scoops of ice cream on July 23, 1904. According to the story on the Menches Bros. company website, cherles and Frank Menches invented the waffle cone.

St. Louis World’s Fair

Having baked waffles in Parisian waffle irons during 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, they then thought of wrapping the warm waffle around a fid which is a cone-shaped splicing tool that is used for tent ropes. As the waffle held its shape after cooling, it proved to be an edible container for eating ice cream.

The Menches brothers began productions of these “premium” cones on returning home. They even launched their own business called Premium Ice Cream Cone and Candy Company in Akron, Ohio. Chales continued to work on improvements and even received a patent titled “Baking iron for ice-cream cones” on June &. 1909

Marchiony’s cups

Menches was neither the first, nor the last, to claim priority for inventing the ice cream cone. Italian-American immigrant Italo Marchiony received a patent on December 5, 1903 for a device that could make edible cups with handles. While these weren’t rolled up waffles that remain popular, they did improve business. Street-vending became a lot more efficient with these and for this reason, some consider it as the first cones.

Apart from Menches and Marchiony, Ernest Hamwi, Abe Doumar, Albert and Nick Kabbaz, Arnold Formachou, and David Avayou all lay claim to being the first one to invent the edible cone that is now a staple in the ice cream industry. Their stories range from a moment of inspiration to roll a waffle into a cone when a nearby vendor ran out of serving dishes; coming up with an ice cream sandwich in which ice cream, rather than meat, was filled into pastries rolled into a horn; and seeking inspiration from Western Asia and Europe, where pita bread, metal and paper cones were already being used to hold sweets and ice cream. Interestingly, most of these claimants either made or sold confections at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.

While we might never quite be able to say for certain as to who among these actually invented the cone that we now hold in our hands while having an ice cream, the individuals involved collectively transformed the ice cream industry. As the cone ensures that both the product (ice cream) and the package (cone) are consumed together, it is also a win-win in other ways, as there is no waste left behind.

Picture Credit : Google 

How was the invention of the zip made possible?

In 1918, the United States Navy began using zip fasteners in the clothing and other gear of its men during World War I. By the 1920s, zips could be found in all kinds of clothing, footwear, bags and suitcases. The zip finally arrived on the world scene when fashion designers began using it for haute couture.

The zip was the creation of American inventor Whitcomb Judson. He liked wearing high boots that were all the vogue in 1893, both among men and women. The boots had long shoelaces which took ages to do up. Judson designed a fastener which he called a ‘clasp locker’. It had a slider to link hooks and rings but was clumsy and frequently jammed. The invention was not a success.

It was only 20 years later, in 1913, when Judson employed Swedish engineer Gideon Sundback that the zip took on its present form-two fabric strips with metal or plastic teeth that locked when the zip was pulled closed and unlocked when it was opened.

Judson did not live to see the success of his invention. He died in 1909.

Picture Credit : Google

Did you know Velcro which is used in a number of products today was an accidental invention?

Did you know that the same Velcro that allows you to strap on your floaters in an instant, is also used in the Jarvik-7 artificial heart to attach the chambers? NASA astronauts find Velcro indispensable-it holds down objects which would otherwise float away in zero gravity.  

Swiss engineer Georges de Mestral got the idea for Velcro in 1955, when he hike with his dog. When he returned home, he found innumerable burrs stuck to his coat and socks and to the dog’s fur. Curious, De Mestral examined a burr under a microscope. He discovered that it had tiny hooks on its surface that caught in the loops of the fabric (and animal fur). De Mestral devised a way of reproducing the hook and loop arrangement in woven nylon. He called it Velcro-from the French velours (velvet) and crochet (hook).

Velcro can be reused hundreds of times, sometimes outlasting the product to which it is attached! It is peelable and has enormous shear strength or resistance to sideways forces. A piece less than 1.2 cm square can support a load of 1 tonne! Today Velcro is used in an infinite number of products, comes in various colours and is made not only from nylon but also from steel and plastic.

Picture Credit : Google 

When was mendelevium discovered?

The discovery of mendelevium was announced at the end of April in 1955. It was described by one of its discoverers as “one of the most dramatic in the sequence of syntheses of transuranium elements”.

The search for new elements is something that scientists have been doing for hundreds of years. Once Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev organised the elements known at his time according to a repeating, or periodic (and hence the name periodic table), system in the 1860s, the search became a little easier.

This was because the gaps in Mendeleev’s periodic table pointed to elements that weren’t known yet. The properties of these elements, however, could be predicted based on their place in the table and the neighbours around them, thereby making it easier to discover new elements. Mendeleev’s table has since been expanded, to make space for other new elements.

One of those new elements discovered was element number 101, named mendelevium after. Mendeleev. American Nobel Prize winner Glenn Seaborg, who was one of the discoverers of the element, wrote that the discovery of mendelevium was “one of the most dramatic in the sequence of syntheses of transuranium elements”, in a chapter co-written by him for The New Chemistry. Additionally, he also wrote in that chapter that “It was the first case in which a new element was produced and identified one atom at a time.”

Begins with a bang

Ivy Mike, the first thermonuclear device, was dropped for testing on the Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific Ocean in 1952, sending a radioactive cloud into the air, from which samples were collected. The lab reports suggested that two new elements-elements 99 (einsteinium) and 100 (fermium) – were discovered from the debris. The discoveries came at a time when there was a race to discover new elements. The leading researchers of the U.S. involved in this race were camped at the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, under the direction of physicist Ernest Lawrence A team of scientists which included Albert Ghiorso, Stanley Thompson, Bernard Harvey, Gregory Choppin, and Seaborg, came up with a plan to produce element 101 using a billion atoms of einsteinium-253 that were formed in a reactor.

The idea was to spread the atoms of einsteinium onto a thin gold foil. As its half-life was about three weeks, the researchers effectively had a week to perform their experiments after receiving it. Based on Ghiorso’s calculations, they were aware that only about one atom of the new element 101 would be produced for every three hours the gold foil was bombarded with alpha particles.

Race against time

As the experiment would yield only a very small amount of the new element, the scientists set up a second gold foil behind the first to catch the atoms. It was a race against time as well as the half-life of element 101 was expected to be a few hours only.

With the Radiation Laboratory atop a hill and the cyclotron at its base, there really was a mad rush to get the samples to the lab on time. The samples “were collected in a test tube, which I took and then jumped in a car driven by Ghiorso”, is how Choppin put it in his own words.

On the night of the discovery, the target was irradiated in three-hour intervals for a total of nine hours. By 4 AM on February 19, 1955, they had recorded five decay events characteristic of element 101 and eight from element 100, fermium. With conclusive evidence of element 101’s existence, Choppin mentions that “We left Seaborg a note on the successful identification of Z =101 and went home to sleep on our success.”

At the end of April 1955, the discovery of element 101 was announced to the world. The university’s press release stated that “The atoms of the new element may have been the rarest units of matter that have existed on earth for nearly 5 billion years… The 17 atoms of the new element all decayed, of course, and the ‘new’ element is for the present extinct once again.”

Cold War era

As element 101 marked the beginning of the second hundred elements of the periodic table, the scientists wanted to name it after Mendeleev, the man behind the periodic table.

Despite the discovery happening during the Cold War era, Seaborg was able to pull enough strings to convince the U.S. government to accept the proposal to name the element after a Russian scientist. The International Union of Pure & Applied Chemistry approved the name mendelevium and the scientists published their discovery in the June 1955 issue of Physical Review Letters.

While only small quantities of mendelevium have ever been produced, more stable isotopes of the element have since been made. The most stable version known as of now has a half-life of over one-and-a-half months, allowing for better opportunities to further study heavy elements and their properties.

Picture Credit : Google