I created this blog to help you get in touch with your science side (pun intended) and, if some people are having trouble understanding how the universe works, to help them.
It’s time to begin your adventure!
Chemistry – A History
A theory of 4 elements (fire, wind, water and earth) was first bought to life in Classical Greece by Aristotle which states that the first four elements were the starting point from which everything is formed. Greek atomism first starts in 440 BC, included in the works of philosophers like Democritus and Epicurus. Roman philosopher Lucretius continued the theory in 50 BC in his book De rerum natura (On The Nature Of Things). Greek atomism was unlike modern science because in was purely philosophical with small to no concern of observations or experiments.
Alchemy first arose in the Hellenistic world as the study of natural substances with a simple goal in mind: transmute the elements into gold and discover the elixir for immortality. Alchemy was uncovered and popular in the Arab world after the Muslim conquests and scattered into Medieval and Renaissance Europe in the form of Latin translations.
A group of chemists from Oxford, Robert Boyle, John Mayow and Robert Hooke began to transform alchemy into a more disciplined science. Boyle is considered the father of chemistry because of his book The Sceptical Chymist where the differences between chemistry and alchemy are outlined.
German scientist Georg Ernst proposed the theory of pholgiston but was overturned by French chemist Antoine Lavoisier whom developed the law of conservation of mass and a new system of chemical nomenclature used to this very day. Antoine Lavoisier is considered to be the father of modern chemistry.
John Dalton, an English scientist, pitched the theory of atom which states that everything is made of ‘atoms’ and that individual atoms had different atomic weight.
Dmitri Mendeleev and Lothar Meyer created the modern periodic table of elements in the 1860s and that is used today.
Physics – A History
Physics meaning “knowledge of nature” is a science that involves the study of matter, its motion through space and time, energy and force. It is a general analysis of the world and how the universe behaves.
Physics was first recognized as a separate science when the early modern Europeans used methods to discover what are now the laws of physics.
Some major breakthroughs during the early period of physics include the replacement of the geocentric model for the solar system with the helio-centric model, the laws that control the motion of the planets by Johannes Kepler and the discovery of the laws of motion and universal gravitation by Isaac Newton.
Modern day physics started in the early 20th century with quantum theory by Planck and Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. Quantum mechanics became pioneered by Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger and Paul Dirac. From early work the Standard Model of particle physics was derived.
The Science Side 