Science Teachers’ Assocation of NSW inc 2019–20 Calendar
MONDAY
TUESDAY
15
1919 birth of Dennis
Flanagan, US editor of
Scientific American for
37 years. He developed a
style of inviting scientists
to write supported articles,
aimed at the general
reader. Writers included
Oppenheimer, Einstein &
Pauling. Circulation rose
from 40,000 to
600,000 in his time.
22
29
5
12
WEDNESDAY
1876 birth of Alfred
Stock, German chemist;
devised the system
for inorganic chemical
names, now with roman
numerals e.g. Fe(II)Cl
His lab work resulted in
chronic Hg poisoning but
he recovered by avoiding
exposure, even a
malgam fillings.
16
23
1946, the first time an
altitude of 100 miles was
reached by a test rocket,
a V-2 fueled with alcohol
& liquid oxygen; the first
separation of a nose
cone which, instead of
wartime explosives, had
scientific equipment e.g.
cameras & sensors.
30
6
1814 birth of Anders
Ångström, Swedish
physicist whose
spectroscopy expertise
is recognised by the
angstrom unit (10-10m).
In 1862 he analysised
solar spectra to show
hydrogen in the Sun’s
atmosphere.
13
THURSDAY
17
24
1923 birth of Stephanie
Kwolek, American
chemist and inventor of
Kevlar, a material with
a high tensile strength
to weight ratio, used in
aerospace engineering.
31
18
1984, Soviet cosmonaut
Svetlana Savitskaya,
made her second trip
into space, and became
the first woman to walk
in space. She carried
out over three hours of
experiments outside the
orbiting space station
Salyut Seven.
25
1945 birth of Douglas
Dean Osheroff, US
physicist, who shared
a 1996 Nobel Prize for
the discovery of super-
fluidity in the isotope
He-3. Operating as a
superfluid near absolute
zero, helium atoms
move in a co-ordinated
manner.
1
1848 death of Jöns
J. Berzelius, Swedish
chemist: modernised
chemistry by determing
atomic weights, using
letters for chemical
symbols and subscript
numbers in compound
formulae. He found
selenium & thorium, &
co-discovered cerium.
7
8
19 20
1875, Lecoq de
Boisbaudran isolated a
tiny sample of the new
element gallium (Ga 31)
after starting in Feb 1874
with 52 kg of mineral ore.
It showed a previously
unknown violet line at
417.0.
26
27
SATURDAY SUNDAY
1969 Neil Armstrong
became the first man to
walk on the moon. 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts
Armstrong & Aldrin
blasted off after 21.5 hrs
on the moon surface.
The lunar module’s lower
section was left with a
plaque: Here men from
the planet Earth first set
foot upon the moon, July
1969 A.D. We came in
peace for all mankind.
19
14
15
21
22
29
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21
26 27 28
2 1770 death of Guillaume
Rouelle, French
apothecary, who
proposed the modern
definition of salts,
distinguished neutral,
acid and basic salts &
founded the French
school of chemistry.
Lavoisier & Proust were
among his students. 1929, death of Carl von
Welsbach, Austrian
scientist, inventor of the
gas mantle, which he
discovered while doing
flame tests to examine
spectra of rare earth
compounds. He greatly
improved the brightness
of gas lamps.
1911 birth of William A.
Fowler, US astro-physicist,
who shared a Nobel Prize
in 1983 for ‘his theoretical
and experimental
studies of the nuclear
reactions of importance
in the formation of the
chemical elements in the
universe’.
9
3
4
10 11
1893 birth of Walter
K.F. Noddack, German
chemist: in 1925 he and
wife, Ida Tacke, found
rhenium (Re 75), a rare
metal that resembles
Mn. Named after the
Rhine River, it was the
last stable element to be
discovered. 1868, P. Janssen was
the first to discover
helium from a yellow
line observed by spectral
analysis in India during
a solar eclipse. It was
thought to be only in the
sun until William Ramsay
found it in the lab, 1895.
17 18
23 24 25
30 1887 birth of Friedrich
Paneth. In the 1920’s he
improved methods to
measure minute amounts
of He (≥10-10cm3)
released by radioactive
elements in rocks, enabling
determination of age
of rocks on earth and in
meteorites, which also
indicates the age of
the solar system.
16
1966 Lunar Orbiter 1 took
the first image of Earth
from the Moon. Later the
b&w earthrise picture
was processed for higher
resolution. This image
was an after-thought
of the main mission to
identify future landing
sites.
1982, an atom of
Meitnerium (Mt 109), a
new element, was made
when physicists in West
Germany bombarded
a target of Bi-209 with
nuclei of Fe-58.
28
20
1870 birth of Bertram B.
Boltwood, US chemist &
physicist who studied the
radioactivity of uranium
& thorium, and their
resulting products, which
laid a foundation for the
concept of isotopes.
1852 death of Johan
Gadolin, Finnish chemist
who discovered the
element yttrium (Y 39) in
1794, the first of a family
of 17 rare earth elements
that includes the 15
lanthanides now.
1813 birth of Jean Servais
Stas, Belgian chemist,
notable for his accurate
determinations of atomic
weights.
1743 birth of Antoine
Lavoisier, father of modern
chemistry: built his own
lab; in 1778 he found air
has two gases that he
called oxygen & nitrogen.
He discovered law of
conservation of mass,
devised modern method of
naming compounds then
was guillotined during
the French Revolution. FRIDAY 2000, livermorium Lv
was first produced by
scientists working jointly
at Lawrence Livermore
Nat. Lab. (US) & Joint
Institute for Nuclear
Research (Russia) where
one atom of Lv-293 was
made by bombarding
a Cu-248 target with
Ca-48 ions.
31