Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz

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Count Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta

(18 Feb 1745 - 5 Mar 1827)

Italian physicist who invented the first battery, able to supply a sustained current of electricity.

Short biography of Count Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta >>

Alessandro Volta

Illustration from Millikan's textbook, A First Course in Physics (1906, rev. 1913)

Alessandro Volta (source)

Before beginning his famous Nobel Prize-winning Oil Drop experiment, Robert Millikan co-authored a textbook with a colleague at the University of Chicago. It contained a number of illustrations, each one with a decorative border. (Perhaps that provided a more interesting appearance for the students while reading the textbook.)

A close look at the details within the border reveals a selections of diagrams and experiments which those students would no doubt become familiar. Sadly, there is no key in the textbook to these. So...

Challenge! How many can you recognize?

To make them easier to see, sections of the border can be seen in these enlargements.

From Robert Andrews Millikan, A First Course in Physics (1906, rev.1913), 234. (source)

Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta quote: ...each metal has a certain power, which is different from metal to metal, of

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See also:

Science Quotes by Count Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta.
18 Feb - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Volta's birth.
Alessandro Volta - Enlarged Details of Illustration Border from Robert Millikan's textbook.
Alessandro Volta - Monument in Pavia, Italy.
Sketch of Alessandro Volta - biography and image from Popular Science (May 1892).
Volta: Science and Culture in the Age of Enlightenment, by Giuliano Pancaldi. - book suggestion.
Booklist for Alessandro Volta.

Nature bears long with those who wrong her. She is patient under abuse. But when abuse has gone too far, when the time of reckoning finally comes, she is equally slow to be appeased and to turn away her wrath. (1882) -- Nathaniel Egleston, who was writing then about deforestation, but speaks equally well about the danger of climate change today.

Carl Sagan: In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) ...(more by Sagan)

Albert Einstein: I used to wonder how it comes about that the electron is negative. Negative-positive—these are perfectly symmetric in physics. There is no reason whatever to prefer one to the other. Then why is the electron negative? I thought about this for a long time and at last all I could think was “It won the fight!” ...(more by Einstein)

Richard Feynman: It is the facts that matter, not the proofs. Physics can progress without the proofs, but we can't go on without the facts ... if the facts are right, then the proofs are a matter of playing around with the algebra correctly. ...(more by Feynman)