January Science Fun Facts

Here are some events from different areas of science history that occurred during January.

General
In 1872, the metric system was officially introduced throughout the German Empire.* (Since 1795, the metric system had been the standard in France. A committee from the French Academy used a decimal system and defined the meter to be one 10-millionths of the distance from the equator to the Earth's Pole. For the metric unit of mass, the gram was defined as the mass of one cubic centimeter of pure water at a given temperature.) By act Congress, the use of the metric system was legalized in the U.S. (1866), but was not made obligatory. On 20 May 1875, the Treaty of the Meter was signed by twenty countries, including the United States, at the International Metric Convention.

Earth Science
In 1801, Italian astronomer, Guiseppe Piazzi of Palermo, discovered the first and largest asteroid, 1 Ceres, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Piazzi proposed the name Ceres Ferdinandea, in honor of Sicily's patron Roman goddess, and his patron, the king. It revolves around the Sun in 4.6 yrs, with diameter about 960 km (600 miles). This sighting followed that of the planet Uranus (1781) by the British astronomer William Herschel (1783-1822). Piazzi's discovery provided a body between the orbit of Mars and Jupiter fitting the so-called "Titius-Bode's law." German astronomer Johann Olbers later found more of these bodies now called "asteroids" or "minor bodies of Solar System". Over a thousand such objects are now known.

Biology
In 1947, Stanford University reported the isolation of the polio virus, after three years of research funded by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. The work was done by Drs Hubert S. Loring and C.E. Schwerdt of the Stanford Dept. of Chemistry. Laboratory tests and photographs showed it to be at least 80% pure, and that it could lead to producing an impurity-free vaccine for use against infantile paralysis. Other vaccines existing at the time had problems with large amounts of impurities. The virus was obtained by purification from ground-up brain and spinal cord of rats infected with the polio virus. Electron microscope photographs showed the virus as a spherical particle about 25 nanometers across.

Chemistry
In 1915, Aspirin was made available for the first time in tablet form. The pills were manufactured by Bayer pharmaceuticals in Germany. The medicine had previously been used in powder form. Salicin, the parent compound of the salicylate drug family had been isolated from willow bark in 1829. From 1875, sodium salicylate was used as a commercial pain reliever, despite side effects such as bleeding of the stomach lining. In 1897, Felix Hoffman, a German chemist working for Bayer, found a suitable, less acidic medication - acetylsalicylic acid - marketed by Bayer under the name "Aspirin". It has since become the biggest selling drug in the world as an analgesic (anti-pain), anti-inflammatory, and antipyretic (fever-reducing) medication.

Physics
In 1851, the rotation of the Earth was proved experimentally by Leon Foucault. After weeks of work, he recorded in his journal that he made this discovery at 2:00 am working with a pendulum in the cellar of the house he shared with his mother. Using a steel wire 2-m long with a 5-kg brass bob, he had made a pendulum suspended in a way that freely permitted it; he found that its plane of oscillation slowly rotated relative to the ground. This led to using much longer versions of his pendulum. He found that the angular velocity of the rotation equaled wsinq where w is the angular velocity of the Earth rotating on its axis, and q is the latitude of the site of the pendulum. He demonstrated his discovery on 31 Mar 1851 for Napoleon.

And here is a quote to bring hope and joy to you and your students.
I never teach my pupils. I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn. - Albert Einstein