The Science Book

79 The first hydrogen balloon, inspired by Cavendish, was cheered by a huge crowd of spectators. Since hydrogen is so explosive, ...

80 B y 1700, it was known that persistent surface winds, or “trade winds,” blow from a northeasterly direction between a latitud ...

81 T he warm Gulf Stream current that flows eastward across the North Atlantic Ocean is one of the greatest movements of water o ...

82 DEPHLOGISTICATED AIR JOSEPH PRIESTLEY (1733–1804) F ollowing Joseph Black’s pioneering discovery of “fixed air,” or carbon di ...

83 Priestley’s apparatus for his gas experiments appear in his book about his discoveries. At the front, a mouse is kept in oxyg ...

84 See also: Joseph Black 76–77 ■ Henry Cavendish 78–79 ■ Joseph Priestley 82–83 ■ Jan Ingenhousz 85 ■ John Dalton 112–13 F renc ...

85 See also: Joseph Black 76–77 ■ Henry Cavendish 78–79 ■ Joseph Priestley 82–83 ■ Joseph Fourier 122–23 I n the 1770s, Dutch sc ...

86 DISCOVERING NEW PLANETS WILLIAM HERSCHEL (1738–1822) I n 1781, German scientist William Herschel identified the first new pla ...

87 See also: Ole Rømer 58–59 ■ Isaac Newton 62–69 ■ Nevil Maskelyne 102–03 ■ Geoffrey Marcy 327 EXPANDING HORIZONS Assisted by h ...

88 THE DIMINUTION OF THE VELOCITY OF LIGHT JOHN MICHELL (1724–1793) I n a 1783 letter to Henry Cavendish at the Royal Society, B ...

89 Matter swirls around a black hole in a doughnut-shaped “accretion disk” before being sucked in. Heat in the swirling disk cau ...

SETTING THE ELECTRIC FLUID IN MOTION ALESSANDRO VOLTA (1745 –1827) ...

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92 ALESSANDRO VOLTA F or centuries, philosophers had wondered at the terrifying power of lightning, and also at the way in which ...

EXPANDING HORIZONS 93 resin disk rubbed with cat fur to give it a static electric charge. Each time a metal disk was placed over ...

94 ALESSANDRO VOLTA Britain. The letter was titled “On the electricity excited by the mere Contact of conducting Substances of d ...

EXPANDING HORIZONS 95 but Banks immediately spread the word to anyone who might be interested. Within weeks, people all over Bri ...

NO VESTIGE OF A BEGINNING AND NO PROSPECT OF AN END JAMES HUTTON (1726 –1797) ...

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98 JAMES HUTTON F or millennia, human cultures have pondered the age of Earth. Before the advent of modern science, estimates we ...