Showing results for "Media" in Science & Technology

Srinivasa Ramanujan has been described as a rock-star mathematician. Though he died almost one hundred years ago, his work in mathematics will always be important.

When Thomas Edison was a boy, he loved performing experiments and coming up with new inventions. His curiosity sometimes got him in trouble, though, like when he accidentally burned down his dad’s barn! By the time he turned 12, he had found ways to make a living by learning how to print newspapers and send telegraphs in Detroit, Michigan. Imagine what he did as an adult!

Galileo used his telescope to discover new and marvelous mysteries in the night sky!

Joseph Montgolfier and his brother Étienne developed the first balloon. But its first riders were a sheep, a rooster, and a duck!

Meet Doug Taron, a scientist who studies butterflies and other Insects & Arachnids at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Chicago.

Isaac Newton did not discover gravity; people had noticed it before! But he did figure out the rules for how it works.

In the late 1700s, young Louis Braille overcame his disability by inventing "night writing," a system of raised dots to help blind people read. This alphabet of raised dots allowed sightless people to live more independent lives.

An old timer regales the audience with the story of the Stanley brothers and their famous Stanley Steamer, a steam-powered automobile.

Why would Geoffrey Pyke propose a strange idea like building an aircraft carrier from a mixture of ice and wood pulp?

Before their experiments, inventions, and discoveries that changed the world, the world’s most celebrated scientists had regular-kid problems just like you. Stephen Hawking hated school and preferred to spend his free time building model airplanes, inventing board games, and even building his own computer. Jane Goodall got in trouble for bringing worms and snails into her house. And Neil deGrasse Tyson had to start a dog-walking business to save up money to buy a telescope.

Jeanne Villepreux-Power was never expected to be a scientist. Born in 1794 in a French village more than 100 miles from the ocean, she pursued an improbable path that brought her to the island of Sicily. There, she took up natural history and solved the two-thousand-year-old mystery of how the argonaut octopus gets its shell. In an era when most research focused on dead specimens, Jeanne was determined to experiment on living animals. And to keep sea creatures alive for her studies, she had to invent a contraption to hold them: the aquarium.

Maude scoops a jellyfish out of the water and embarks on more than a year of observation of the animal, accomplishing something countless other scientists were unable to do: trace the life cycle of a jellyfish and understand the creature’s metamorphosis from larva to adult. Maude’s story must be told. Her painstaking observations of a compass jellyfish in 1899-1900 laid the foundation for research still ongoing today.

Before Isaac Newton became the father of physics, an accomplished mathematician, or a leader of the scientific revolution, he was a boy living in an apothecary's house, observing and experimenting, recording his observations of the world in a tiny notebook. As a young genius living in a time before science as we know it existed, Isaac studied the few books he could get his hands on, built handmade machines, and experimented with alchemy.

By building his own microscope, Antony van Leeuwenhoek advanced humanity's understanding of the oft-invisible world around us. Microbes are everywhere: in the soil and oceans, in snow, and inside our bodies. But in Antony van Leeuwenhoek’s time, people believed that what they saw with their own eyes was all that existed in the world. How did a simple tradesman - who didn’t go to college or speak English or Latin like all the other scientists - change everyone’s minds?

Ada Lovelace was the daughter of Lord Byron, a poet, and Anna Isabella Milbanke, a mathematician. Her parents separated when she was young, and her mother insisted on a logic-focused education, rejecting Byron's mad love of poetry. But Ada remained fascinated with her father and considered mathematics poetical science.

John Logie Baird loves inventing things! When he hears about another inventor who has built a machine to show real live pictures, John sets about trying to do the same. Equipped with bits and pieces found in his house, John begins a journey that will change the course of history forever.

In the past and present, Black people have developed new products and created new processes in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). Their work has addressed problems such as medical and healthcare inequality and the negative impacts of climate change. Celebrate the people who have made great achievements in STEM, including PlayVS founder Delane Parnell, astronaut, doctor, and engineer Mae Jemison, and environmental justice leader Peggy Shephard.

Young Neil deGrasse Tyson was starstruck when he first visited the sky theater at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. He couldn't believe the crowded, glittering night sky at the planetarium was real - until a visit to the country years later revealed the impossible. That discovery was like rocket fuel for Neil's passion about space. This story of how one boy's quest for knowledge about space led him to become a star scientist is perfect for young children who are fascinated by the universe, aspiring scientists, and the dreamer in all of us.

Both Thomas Edison and Henry Ford started off as insatiably curious tinkerers. That curiosity led them to become inventors - with very different results. As Edison invented hit after commercial hit, gaining fame and fortune, Henry struggled to make a single invention (an affordable car) work. Witnessing Thomas' glorious career from afar, a frustrated Henry wondered about the secret to his success.

Discover some of the many contributions women, people of color, immigrants, and people with disabilities made to space exploration. From an engineer in the control room to a mission specialist that went on four space flights, these heroes are transforming how we think of space.