The Science Book

FUNDAMENTAL BUILDING BLOCKS 279 were preparing to divide. In 1900, Gregor Mendel’s experiments with heredity in pea plants were ...

280 JAMES WATSON AND FRANCIS CRICK likened to studying the myriad light patterns cast by a crystal chandelier on the ceiling and ...

FUNDAMENTAL BUILDING BLOCKS 281 themselves. Instead they collected data from others, including the results of chemical experimen ...

282 JAMES WATSON AND FRANCIS CRICK In assembling the cardboard pieces for their 3-D jigsaw, Watson and Crick were juggling a vas ...

FUNDAMENTAL BUILDING BLOCKS 283 half of the double helix; then, carrying its genetic information as the sequence of bases, it wo ...

284 EVERYTHING THAT CAN HAPPEN HAPPENS HUGH EVERETT III (1930–1982) H ugh Everett III is a cult figure to sci-fi enthusiasts bec ...

FUNDAMENTAL BUILDING BLOCKS 285 soon as it is observed. The very act of measuring a quantum system seems to “shunt” it into one ...

A PERFECT GAME OF TIC-TAC-TOE DONALD MICHIE (1923–2007) ...

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288 DONALD MICHIE C omputers in 1961 were mostly mainframes the size of a room. Minicomputers would not arrive until 1965 and mi ...

FUNDAMENTAL BUILDING BLOCKS 289 Colossus, the world’s first electronic programmable computer, was made in 1943 to crack codes at ...

290 DONALD MICHIE box for the permutation of O top left and X bottom right did not contain beads for putting the next O on those ...

291 a form, that when it shows elements of other categories of learning we may reasonably suspect these of contamination with a ...

292 THE UNITY OF FUNDAMENTAL FORCES SHELDON GLASHOW (1932–) T he idea of forces of nature, or fundamental forces, goes back at l ...

FUNDAMENTAL BUILDING BLOCKS 293 So what kind of boson might be involved? Glashow guessed that the bosons associated with the wea ...

294 WE ARE THE CAUSE OF GLOBAL WARMING CHARLES KEELING (1928–2005) IN CONTEXT BRANCH Meteorology BEFORE 1824 Joseph Fourier sugg ...

Keeling measured the carbon dioxide level at the station regularly, and discovered three things. First, there was a daily variat ...

296 THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT EDWARD LORENZ (1917–2008) M uch of the history of science has been devoted to developing simple models ...

297 Here, turbulence forms at the tip of a vortex left in the wake of an aircraft’s wing. Study of the critical point beyond whi ...

298 A VACUUM IS NOT EXACTLY NOTHING PETER HIGGS (1929–) T he great scientific event of 2012 was the announcement from scientists ...