Ab? ?Al? al-?asan ibn al-?asan ibn al-Haytham as shown on the obverse of the 1982 Iraqi 10 dinar note

We live in a scientific age. Millions of young people study science, thousands of universities teach it, and hundreds of publications chronicle it. We even have a cable channel devoted exclusively to its wonders. We are immersed in technology rooted in its discoveries. But what is science, and who was its first practitioner?

Science is the study of the physical world, but it is not just a topic, a subject, a field of interest. It is a discipline—a system of inquiry that adheres to a specific methodology—the scientific method. In its basic form, the scientific method consists of seven steps:

1) observation;

2) statement of a problem or question;

3) formulation of a hypothesis, or a possible answer to the problem or question;

4) testing of the hypothesis with an experiment;

5) analysis of the experiment’s results;

6) interpretation of the data and formulation of a conclusion;

7) publication of the findings.

One can study phenomena without adhering to the scientific method, of course. The result, however, is not science. It is pseudoscience or junk science.

Throughout history, many people in many parts of the world have studied nature without using the scientific method. Some of the earliest people to do so were the ancient Greeks. Scholars such as Aristotle made many observations about natural phenomena, but they did not test their ideas with experiments. Instead they relied on logic to support their findings. As a result, they often arrived at erroneous conclusions. Centuries later the errors of the Greeks were exposed by scholars using the scientific method.

Perhaps the most famous debunking of Greek beliefs occurred in 1589 when Galileo Galilei challenged Aristotle’s notions about falling bodies. Aristotle had asserted that heavy bodies fall at a faster rate than light bodies do. His contention was logical but unproven. Galileo decided to test Aristotle’s hypothesis, legend says, by dropping cannon balls of different weights from a balcony of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. He released the balls simultaneously and found that neither ball raced ahead of the other. Rather, they sped earthward together and hit the ground at the same time. Galileo also conducted experiments in which he rolled balls of different weights down inclines in an attempt to discover the truth about falling bodies. For these and other experiments, Galileo is considered by many to be the first scientist.

Galileo was not the first person to conduct experiments or to follow the scientific method, however. European scholars had been conducting experiments for three hundred years, ever since a British-born Franciscan monk named Roger Bacon advocated experimentation in the thirteenth century. One of Bacon’s books, Perspectiva (Optics) challenges ancient Greek ideas about vision and includes several experiments with light that include all seven steps of the scientific method.

Bacon’s Perspectiva is not an original work, however. It is a summary of a much longer work entitled De aspectibus (The Optics). Perspectiva follows the organization of De aspectibus and repeats its experiments step by step, sometimes even word for word. But De aspectibus is not an original work, either. It is the translation of a book written in Arabic entitled Kit?b al-Man?zir (Book of Optics). Written around 1021, Kit?b al-Man?zir predates Roger Bacon’s summary of it by 250 years. The author of this groundbreaking book was a Muslim scholar named Ab? ‘Al? al-Hasan ibn al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham.

Born in Basra (located in what is now Iraq) in 965, Ibn al-Haytham—known in the West as Alhazen or Alhacen—wrote more than 200 books and treatises on a wide range of subjects. He was the first person to apply algebra to geometry, founding the branch mathematics known as analytic geometry.

Ibn al-Haytham’s use of experimentation was an outgrowth of his skeptical nature and his Muslim faith. He believed that human beings are flawed and only God is perfect. To discover the truth about nature, he reasoned, one had to allow the universe to speak for itself. “The seeker after truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them,” Ibn al-Haytham wrote in Doubts Concerning Ptolemy, “but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration.”

To test his hypothesis that “lights and colors do not blend in the air,” for example, Ibn al-Haytham devised the world’s first camera obscura, observed what happened when light rays intersected at its aperture, and recorded the results. This is just one of dozens of “true demonstrations,” or experiments, contained in Kit?b al-Man?zir.

By insisting on the use of verifiable experiments to test hypotheses, Ibn al-Haytham established a new system of inquiry—the scientific method—and earned a place in history as the first scientist.

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Opal has been a mystery for centuries. No two opals look alike. The word ‘opal’ was derived from a Greek word opallos, meaning “to see changes of color”. Opal is derived as a precious gemstone which is formed from non-crystalline silica gel. It consists of 6 to 10 per cent water and small silica spheres are arranged in a regular pattern. It generally measures 5.5 to 6.5 on MOH’s hardness scale with diamonds measuring 9 to 10 and pearls 4 to 5. It is a birthstone for October.

Opal dates back to 1849 where it was found at a cattle station named Tarrawilla, near Angaston some 80 km outside Adelaide in Australia. Nearly 95% of the opal is found in Australia. A small number is found in other countries like Mexico, Brazil and USA. There are three major opal mining regions in Australia that produce different types of opal.

White opal also known as “milk” opal is found in and around the towns of Coober Pedy, Mintabie and Andamooka in South Australia. The most famous opal is the black opal which is found in Lightning Ridge in the state of New South Wales. Boulder Opal is found in Central Queensland, Quilpie, Winton and Opalton. Other opals include Light Opal, Doublet, Triplet, Common, Synthetic and Imitation.

Most of the opal deposits are found in New South Wales, South Australia and Queensland. At present, mining of opal is done in the following areas and each produces solid Opal with specific characteristics and color patterns.

Lightning Ridge, NSW, is famous for glorious black opal. This town is situated 770 kilometers northwest of Sydney. Black opal was first discovered at Lighting Ridge in the late 1880’s.

White Cliffs is Australia’s oldest commercial opal field. This is situated around 295 kilometres northeast of Broken Hill. Opal was first mined at White Cliffs about 1889. For nearly 30 years, White Cliff opal fields produced opal for the world market.

The real development of Queensland’s vast opal deposits began in 1873 with the discovery of fine quality opal north of Thargomindah. Opal mines are concentrated in certain regions like Yowah, Quilpie, Eromanga and Jundah.

Coober Pedy is famous for White or milky opals. At present, opal fields encompass an area of approximately 45 kilometres. Andamooka is found southwest of Coober Pedy in harsh desert country. Andamooka is one of Australia’s most famous opal fields, having produced some of the most beautiful pieces of opal. The opal fields in and around Andamooka produce top gem, crystal, light opal and some dark opal.

Opal usually occurs in both sedimentary and volcanic rocks. There are various methods of opal mining.

Methods of opal mining

Sink a shaft:

The simplest form of opal mining is by shaft sinking with a pick and shovel. A shaft is sunk straight down until some promising “opal dirt” is discovered. Length of the shaft could be as short as three metres or as long as 20 metres. A handpick or screwdriver is used to extract any opal found, due to the frailty of the stone.

Open cut mining:

Open cut method is done by the use of heavy machinery to remove large amounts of opal dirt from closer to the surface for inspection. This method is more expensive and is mostly used to search for boulder opal in Central Queensland.

Noodling:

Many locals search through heaps of discarded mullock for pieces of precious opal. An abandoned open-cut mine is another good place for a noodler, using a rake and sieve for tools. Some have taken to large scale machine noodling by allowing large amounts of opal dirt travel on a conveyer belt under ultra-violet light, which detects the precious opal.

Puddling and Rumbling:

A Puddler is a large mesh-lined drum attached to a motor. This device rotates and turns the clay into sludge as water is pumped into the drum. The sludge escapes through the mesh. A related technique is dry rumbling.

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So what are phloem bundles?  They are the strings on a banana and are part of the system that carries nutrition to all parts of the banana.

For those who want more details on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” – it is a TV game show that offers very large cash prizes for correctly answering 15 (or in some countries, 12) consecutive multiple-choice questions of increasing difficulty. The format is owned and licensed by the Japanese production company Sony Pictures Television International.

The American version offers 1 million dollars as its maximum cash prize while the maximum cash prize in the original British version is one million pounds. Most international versions offer a top prize of one million units of the local currency, though the actual value of the prize varies widely, depending on the currency’s exchange rate. In the United States the top cash prizes have been changed to annuities.

Now my only question for you is – does anyone know what that millionaire question was that involved the phloem bundle, exactly?

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Laika is actually a Russian word for “dog” and it generally refers to any breed that is similar to the husky. Laika, the dog, was believed to be a mongrel that may have been a cross between a husky and possibly a terrier breed, although any number of Nordic breeds could have contributed to the dog’s lineage.

Lakia was originally named Kudryavka and she had many nicknames over the course of her training. Although Laika died during the flight, her remains burning up in the atmosphere on April 14, 1958, the memory of that sweet little dog ignited a debate over the treatment of animals in the race for science.

Today, Lakia is remember in many places including literature and songs and the little monument found in Russia of a little dog perched atop a rocket.

Photo Credit: http://www.zarya.info/Diaries/Sputnik/Sputnik2.php

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For those who aren’t sure, WD-40 is a spray oil that is used as a lubricant, a cleaner and for anti-corrosion.  It was invented in 1953 and became available for households across the country in 1958.  The inventor of WD-40 was Norm Larson (1923-1970).

WD-40, which is also the trademarked name, stands for water displacement, which is a way to prevent corrosion.  The 40 stands simply for the 40th solution (or attempt).  This means Norm Larson created 39 other failures before success.

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Zinc can be found in many places including the air, soil, water and in the food we eat.  It is found most abundantly in the crust of the earth.  Zinc is important as we need zinc in our diets.  The shiny, blue/white metal also has many commercial and industrial uses such as being mixed with other metals to create bronze and brass, for use in the creation of certain types of batteries and for use as a rust preventive coating on fences and other metals. 

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Uranium was first discovered in silver mines in what is now the Czech Republic by a German chemist named Martin Klaproth.   Uranium, a dense silver-white metal, is found abundantly in the crust of the earth.  It’s also found in soil, rivers, the ocean, in the food we eat and even – in trace amounts - in human tissue.   The largest uranium deposits are found in Australia, Kazakhstan and Canada.  Only Canadian deposits contain high-grade uranium. 

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