Royal Institution
RI or The Royal Institution… Where science lives!
Yesterday Mom and I went to the RI to go to a chemistry class, unfortunately mom hadn’t checked her email and the class had been canceled. So instead we walked through the museum and learned an abundance of things.
Ten elements have been discovered at the RI, and a few pretty well known ones at that. Humphrey Davy was one of the most well known scientists of his age. He discovered that potassium and sodium were actually different so he is credited for the discovery of both. He continued on a scientific career and discovered 3 more elements: calcium, magnesium, boron, and barium. Davy was a brilliant man and had a ego larger than life. In his journals there were signs that Davy idolized Newton. In the time of Count Rumford and Humphrey Davy it was believed that heat was a liquid, silly right. Well they both did, and both went and proved that heat was not in fact a liquid. Count Rumford used his discovery to create a fire place that kept houses much warm than they were before so if you are reading this in your warm house you can thank Count Rumford for his input. The element Argon, also discovered at RI was discovered by John William Strutt, or Lord Rayleigh, orWilliam Ramsey.. Carl Wilhelm Scheele or discovered Chlorine and was known as a hard luck chemist as many of the things he discovered other people where given credit for, maybe Davy discovered Chlorine, there is a bit of a argument on that subject . When you look at Wikipedia you see that Davy was connected to 9 of the 10 elements discovered there so who knows. As you can see it is disputed who discovered what, where, and when.
Categorised as: Uncategorized
Leave a Reply