1
00:00:00,160 --> 00:00:04,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how

2
00:00:04,480 --> 00:00:16,160
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to the podcast.

3
00:00:16,280 --> 00:00:18,599
Speaker 1: This is also Adamo, the science editor how stuff works

4
00:00:18,640 --> 00:00:20,680
Speaker 1: dot com. And this is Robert Lamb, science writer at

5
00:00:20,680 --> 00:00:22,960
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. And today we're gonna talk

6
00:00:22,960 --> 00:00:28,319
Speaker 1: about a couple of experiments that have props changed the world. Yeah,

7
00:00:28,360 --> 00:00:32,320
Speaker 1: these are pretty pretty big ones. Yeah, so worldwide, billions

8
00:00:32,320 --> 00:00:35,239
Speaker 1: and billions of dollars or earmarked for scientific research and development.

9
00:00:35,240 --> 00:00:37,960
Speaker 1: I looked this up. Turns out in two thousand nine,

10
00:00:38,040 --> 00:00:40,920
Speaker 1: the United States government allowed a hundred and fourteen billion

11
00:00:41,360 --> 00:00:43,920
Speaker 1: just for research and development awarded to its agencies. So

12
00:00:44,040 --> 00:00:47,240
Speaker 1: the various government agencies, as you can imagine. I think

13
00:00:47,240 --> 00:00:50,120
Speaker 1: that the dude in the Riddler costume on those infomercials

14
00:00:50,240 --> 00:00:53,559
Speaker 1: told me this. Yeah, a lot of that money went

15
00:00:53,600 --> 00:00:56,280
Speaker 1: to the Department of Defense. As you met, it always

16
00:00:56,280 --> 00:00:58,440
Speaker 1: helps if you can kill somebody with your science experiment,

17
00:00:58,600 --> 00:01:01,640
Speaker 1: no doubt. And then little less than half of that

18
00:01:01,720 --> 00:01:04,880
Speaker 1: was split between basic research, so they're kind that's driven

19
00:01:04,920 --> 00:01:08,679
Speaker 1: by scientific curiosity or interest in a particular scientific question,

20
00:01:09,160 --> 00:01:11,800
Speaker 1: and then applied research, the kind of research the designed

21
00:01:11,800 --> 00:01:14,720
Speaker 1: to solve practical problems, right, yeah, like some of some

22
00:01:14,760 --> 00:01:16,760
Speaker 1: of the stuff that goes on, it's just really cool. Like, um,

23
00:01:16,880 --> 00:01:20,039
Speaker 1: I was doing a news article several months back about

24
00:01:20,480 --> 00:01:23,760
Speaker 1: research into how hammerhead sharks seek and yes, government was

25
00:01:23,880 --> 00:01:26,560
Speaker 1: flipping the bill for a lot of that, and I

26
00:01:26,600 --> 00:01:28,200
Speaker 1: have yet to come up with a way that that

27
00:01:28,240 --> 00:01:31,160
Speaker 1: could be used to kill somebody or really do anything

28
00:01:31,160 --> 00:01:35,160
Speaker 1: other than understand hammer heads. Right, So I was bringing

29
00:01:35,200 --> 00:01:37,400
Speaker 1: up those numbers just to illustrate how many experiments are

30
00:01:37,400 --> 00:01:38,840
Speaker 1: going on right now, a lot of which we will

31
00:01:38,880 --> 00:01:40,760
Speaker 1: never ever know about, a lot of which won't get

32
00:01:40,800 --> 00:01:43,680
Speaker 1: picked up in the New England Journal of Medicine. So

33
00:01:43,840 --> 00:01:45,880
Speaker 1: we decided to highlight a few that particularly stand up.

34
00:01:46,760 --> 00:01:48,520
Speaker 1: So we're doing a series, the two part series, in

35
00:01:48,520 --> 00:01:51,200
Speaker 1: which we highlight a couple of our favorite experiments with

36
00:01:51,360 --> 00:01:55,920
Speaker 1: the big guns. Here we're talking, yeah, our first one's Darwin. Yeah,

37
00:01:55,920 --> 00:01:57,880
Speaker 1: and I should mention in a few instances we're gonna

38
00:01:57,960 --> 00:02:00,600
Speaker 1: talk about too closely related experiment. It's as opposed to

39
00:02:00,680 --> 00:02:03,720
Speaker 1: one single experiment, just because, as you guys know, science

40
00:02:03,720 --> 00:02:06,720
Speaker 1: stands on the shoulder of giants, so it's hard to

41
00:02:07,440 --> 00:02:10,200
Speaker 1: sometimes separate out who did what when, and sometimes it's

42
00:02:10,240 --> 00:02:12,880
Speaker 1: like a short person standing on the shoulder of a giant,

43
00:02:12,919 --> 00:02:14,640
Speaker 1: and then there's another giant standing on top of the

44
00:02:14,680 --> 00:02:16,840
Speaker 1: short person. But if you get the short person out

45
00:02:16,880 --> 00:02:19,560
Speaker 1: of the mix, then it all falls apart. It's like singer,

46
00:02:19,880 --> 00:02:24,160
Speaker 1: that's true feet Yeah, except Jinga with giants. Yeah. Right,

47
00:02:24,440 --> 00:02:27,359
Speaker 1: So who's the first nominee? Charles Darwin? All right, let's

48
00:02:27,360 --> 00:02:31,600
Speaker 1: talk about Darwin. Darwin's flowers. Um, don't you mean Darwin's

49
00:02:31,639 --> 00:02:35,800
Speaker 1: Galapagos Islands trip. Um, No, you don't mean flowers. No,

50
00:02:36,120 --> 00:02:37,600
Speaker 1: that was this is kind of this kind of came

51
00:02:37,680 --> 00:02:40,600
Speaker 1: later because the Galapagos Island's trip is famous because you know,

52
00:02:40,680 --> 00:02:43,080
Speaker 1: he was always looking at birds and and he you know,

53
00:02:43,120 --> 00:02:46,000
Speaker 1: really putting together you know, all the the the data

54
00:02:46,160 --> 00:02:50,200
Speaker 1: that would lead to origin of species and uh but

55
00:02:50,200 --> 00:02:52,600
Speaker 1: but after all that, you know, it's like the theories

56
00:02:52,639 --> 00:02:55,720
Speaker 1: out there and it's you know, not popular with everybody.

57
00:02:55,760 --> 00:02:57,680
Speaker 1: It's still needs a lot of support, and he has

58
00:02:57,680 --> 00:03:00,320
Speaker 1: his supporters, but there's also plenty of people just like

59
00:03:00,400 --> 00:03:04,600
Speaker 1: making fun of him and drawing and really mean cartoons. Yeah,

60
00:03:04,639 --> 00:03:07,160
Speaker 1: he was and he was of a divisive character for sure,

61
00:03:07,280 --> 00:03:09,840
Speaker 1: and he didn't want to be actually, no, he hated it.

62
00:03:09,880 --> 00:03:12,120
Speaker 1: We we have a I think a really good article

63
00:03:12,240 --> 00:03:16,800
Speaker 1: on the man I wrote that one um. But he

64
00:03:16,880 --> 00:03:19,800
Speaker 1: was having to he was he retreated from the public

65
00:03:19,840 --> 00:03:23,000
Speaker 1: cup eye and let other people handle the pr stuff,

66
00:03:23,000 --> 00:03:26,400
Speaker 1: and he went back to experiments. See what did he

67
00:03:26,480 --> 00:03:31,760
Speaker 1: do well? He started looking into um orchids and uh

68
00:03:32,160 --> 00:03:36,160
Speaker 1: and their pollinators. So he's looking to reinforce the theory

69
00:03:36,200 --> 00:03:40,880
Speaker 1: of natural selection, right, because this boils down to um.

70
00:03:40,200 --> 00:03:43,320
Speaker 1: You know, you look at at some of the crazy

71
00:03:43,480 --> 00:03:46,280
Speaker 1: like orchids and flowers out there and and they'll be

72
00:03:46,320 --> 00:03:49,480
Speaker 1: just be some there's such a variety of design um

73
00:03:49,520 --> 00:03:52,600
Speaker 1: in them. And then somewhere out there in the world

74
00:03:52,600 --> 00:03:57,960
Speaker 1: there's a there's an insect that's that's it's custom evolved

75
00:03:58,080 --> 00:04:01,960
Speaker 1: to pollinate that one particular flower. Right. That was his thought, Yeah,

76
00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:04,520
Speaker 1: that was that was his thoughts. So he started, like,

77
00:04:05,280 --> 00:04:06,760
Speaker 1: you know, if he were round the day, he'd make

78
00:04:06,800 --> 00:04:09,680
Speaker 1: a spreadsheet of this, you know, like which which flowers

79
00:04:09,720 --> 00:04:12,920
Speaker 1: line up with which pollinators? Right, take the Star of

80
00:04:13,000 --> 00:04:15,840
Speaker 1: Bethlehem orchid for example. Um it's an orchid that stores

81
00:04:15,920 --> 00:04:17,960
Speaker 1: nectar near the bottom of a tube up to twelve

82
00:04:17,960 --> 00:04:21,279
Speaker 1: inches long. So Darwin saw this design and he predicted

83
00:04:21,320 --> 00:04:23,520
Speaker 1: that there was a matching animal outfit somewhere out there

84
00:04:23,520 --> 00:04:26,120
Speaker 1: in the where there's there's one insect that's made to

85
00:04:26,200 --> 00:04:29,440
Speaker 1: take care of this. So sure enough, in three scientists

86
00:04:29,480 --> 00:04:33,599
Speaker 1: discovered that the hawk moth sported along probiscus or knows,

87
00:04:34,200 --> 00:04:37,080
Speaker 1: essentially uniquely suited to reach the bottom of this particular

88
00:04:37,160 --> 00:04:41,359
Speaker 1: orchids nectar tube. So this was good because again it

89
00:04:41,440 --> 00:04:45,719
Speaker 1: was providing evidence for his theory of natural selection. Um,

90
00:04:45,760 --> 00:04:47,440
Speaker 1: you know, it's giving credence to on the origin of

91
00:04:47,480 --> 00:04:51,560
Speaker 1: species and just generally bolstering the modern framework of evolution

92
00:04:51,600 --> 00:04:55,080
Speaker 1: as we know it with flowers. Yeah, so let's do

93
00:04:55,120 --> 00:04:58,039
Speaker 1: another biology one. Let's talk about DNA. Oh yeah, this

94
00:04:58,080 --> 00:05:01,480
Speaker 1: is a big one as well. Watson and right, Yeah, well,

95
00:05:01,680 --> 00:05:03,960
Speaker 1: Watson and critic and all the headlines and lots of

96
00:05:03,960 --> 00:05:07,280
Speaker 1: school kids. Certainly no James Watson and Francis Crick as

97
00:05:07,279 --> 00:05:09,800
Speaker 1: the guys who unlocked the mystery of DNA but there

98
00:05:09,839 --> 00:05:12,440
Speaker 1: are a whole lot of other players involved in the mix.

99
00:05:12,960 --> 00:05:15,839
Speaker 1: So that nineteen sixty two Nobel Prize in Medicine was

100
00:05:15,880 --> 00:05:20,920
Speaker 1: split among Watson, Creek, and Maurice Hugh Wilkins. These are

101
00:05:20,920 --> 00:05:23,240
Speaker 1: the guys who figured out the molecular structure of DNA,

102
00:05:23,360 --> 00:05:25,520
Speaker 1: along with the help of more than a few scientists

103
00:05:25,560 --> 00:05:30,239
Speaker 1: like Hershei and Chase. Right, so, back in nineteen fifty two,

104
00:05:30,279 --> 00:05:33,119
Speaker 1: Elfin Hershei and Martha Chase were conducting this now famous

105
00:05:33,200 --> 00:05:37,600
Speaker 1: blender experiment that identified DNA as a molecule responsible for heredity,

106
00:05:39,400 --> 00:05:44,920
Speaker 1: no small feet, and Hershiean. Chase's research prompted a bunch

107
00:05:44,920 --> 00:05:48,240
Speaker 1: of scientists to decipher DNA's molecular structure. Like it was

108
00:05:48,320 --> 00:05:50,839
Speaker 1: just like the scientific sort of gold rush. Instead of

109
00:05:50,839 --> 00:05:54,520
Speaker 1: focusing on goal, they were focusing on doxy ribonucleic acid.

110
00:05:55,600 --> 00:05:57,719
Speaker 1: I like to think that each duo of scientists was

111
00:05:57,800 --> 00:06:00,160
Speaker 1: like like a cop duo, where one was the good

112
00:06:00,200 --> 00:06:01,960
Speaker 1: cop when it was a bad cop, so like Watson

113
00:06:02,040 --> 00:06:04,280
Speaker 1: a crick or like like once taking the strong arm

114
00:06:04,320 --> 00:06:06,560
Speaker 1: with the DNA and the other just like bringing up coffee.

115
00:06:07,720 --> 00:06:09,520
Speaker 1: Did you ever see the TV movie about this, The

116
00:06:09,600 --> 00:06:11,920
Speaker 1: Race for the Double Helix a k A Life Story?

117
00:06:12,880 --> 00:06:15,719
Speaker 1: I think it. It was a BBC production and I'm

118
00:06:15,720 --> 00:06:18,200
Speaker 1: surprised you have not seen it because Jeff Goldbloom was

119
00:06:18,200 --> 00:06:20,800
Speaker 1: in it. WHOA really? Oh man, I bet he's He's

120
00:06:20,800 --> 00:06:23,400
Speaker 1: awesome and a little crazy in it. Yeah, I forget

121
00:06:23,400 --> 00:06:26,440
Speaker 1: which one he was, Watson or Creek, but I must

122
00:06:26,480 --> 00:06:28,039
Speaker 1: have seen that back in the day, because whenever I

123
00:06:28,040 --> 00:06:30,279
Speaker 1: think of DNA and stuff, I always think of gold

124
00:06:30,279 --> 00:06:31,960
Speaker 1: Bloom and I can never think why, And now I

125
00:06:32,000 --> 00:06:33,960
Speaker 1: know it was. Are you sure you weren't thinking about

126
00:06:34,279 --> 00:06:36,719
Speaker 1: the fly where? Because there's a lot of DNA stuff

127
00:06:36,720 --> 00:06:39,320
Speaker 1: in there right right, The fly and the race for

128
00:06:39,360 --> 00:06:42,040
Speaker 1: the double helix. That's the movie. I based my understanding

129
00:06:42,040 --> 00:06:45,880
Speaker 1: of DNA on. So Prize winner Wilkins, along with this

130
00:06:45,880 --> 00:06:49,560
Speaker 1: colleague Rosalind Franklin, who did not win the DNA Nobel Prize,

131
00:06:50,400 --> 00:06:52,839
Speaker 1: which is a whole separate but interesting story, use this

132
00:06:52,880 --> 00:06:55,520
Speaker 1: technique called X ray to fraction to study DNA. And

133
00:06:55,520 --> 00:06:57,560
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about this technique a little later

134
00:06:57,600 --> 00:07:01,360
Speaker 1: on too with you Robert. Right, So, the technique basically

135
00:07:01,400 --> 00:07:04,600
Speaker 1: involves shooting X rays at in this case a line

136
00:07:04,640 --> 00:07:09,160
Speaker 1: fibers have purified DNA. Yeah. The idea is when X

137
00:07:09,240 --> 00:07:12,080
Speaker 1: rays travel through something, they're going to get defracted and

138
00:07:12,240 --> 00:07:14,520
Speaker 1: come theither side. But they get diffracted, they get moved

139
00:07:14,520 --> 00:07:18,080
Speaker 1: around and alter, and there's't they can tell you what

140
00:07:18,160 --> 00:07:21,520
Speaker 1: it just passed through. It's kind of like when you

141
00:07:21,880 --> 00:07:24,520
Speaker 1: and in a very there's a very broad example, but

142
00:07:24,600 --> 00:07:26,120
Speaker 1: it's like when you get an X ray made of

143
00:07:26,120 --> 00:07:28,840
Speaker 1: your tooth, the you know, at the dentist office. Um,

144
00:07:28,960 --> 00:07:32,000
Speaker 1: we're in a back alley, you know. But the the

145
00:07:32,320 --> 00:07:36,400
Speaker 1: X rays passed through your teeth and and onto that

146
00:07:36,440 --> 00:07:41,200
Speaker 1: little film, right, so, and and then they give your

147
00:07:41,200 --> 00:07:46,200
Speaker 1: information about about what happened, Yeah, between cavities exactly. Yeah.

148
00:07:46,320 --> 00:07:49,000
Speaker 1: So yeah, in this case, the diffracted X rays form

149
00:07:49,040 --> 00:07:51,480
Speaker 1: a pattern that's unique to the molecul in question, and

150
00:07:51,560 --> 00:07:53,800
Speaker 1: in this case it was d N A and so

151
00:07:54,600 --> 00:07:57,320
Speaker 1: Rosalind Franklin's now famous photo of DNA shows this X

152
00:07:57,320 --> 00:07:59,880
Speaker 1: shaped pattern. Of course, you have to know how to

153
00:08:00,040 --> 00:08:02,920
Speaker 1: interpret that pattern to quote unquote see the molecule, and

154
00:08:02,920 --> 00:08:05,840
Speaker 1: Watson and Crick did so. Watson and kriicknew that the

155
00:08:05,840 --> 00:08:08,640
Speaker 1: photo represented the signature of a helical molecule, and they

156
00:08:08,680 --> 00:08:10,880
Speaker 1: also figured out the width of the helicks by analyzing

157
00:08:10,880 --> 00:08:15,360
Speaker 1: Franklin's image, and DNA was somewhat decoded. Yeah. The rest

158
00:08:15,400 --> 00:08:17,720
Speaker 1: is history, and we have the image of the double

159
00:08:17,720 --> 00:08:20,480
Speaker 1: helix everywhere, and we fully understand everything that DNA can

160
00:08:20,480 --> 00:08:22,080
Speaker 1: do now, right, Yeah, yeah, we got it, We got

161
00:08:22,120 --> 00:08:26,000
Speaker 1: it down. So let's look at another world changing biology

162
00:08:26,040 --> 00:08:28,400
Speaker 1: type experiment that we like. Oh yeah, yeah, this one,

163
00:08:28,680 --> 00:08:29,840
Speaker 1: this one was really cool. And this one has to

164
00:08:29,880 --> 00:08:35,280
Speaker 1: do with vaccinations, um and the eradication of smallpox. Right, so,

165
00:08:35,360 --> 00:08:38,120
Speaker 1: until recently, smallpox is a pretty serious public health problem,

166
00:08:38,320 --> 00:08:39,960
Speaker 1: all right. So then this said, there was this British

167
00:08:40,000 --> 00:08:43,560
Speaker 1: chef physician by the name of Edward Jenner, and uh

168
00:08:43,840 --> 00:08:49,360
Speaker 1: round he started, uh noticing that dairy maids would catch

169
00:08:49,600 --> 00:08:52,120
Speaker 1: something called cow pox. What is Jenner doing noticing the

170
00:08:52,160 --> 00:08:55,800
Speaker 1: dairy maids is one question? Well, probably pretty cute. Yeah,

171
00:08:55,840 --> 00:08:58,960
Speaker 1: they're pretty cute, cute gals, and and they were they

172
00:08:58,960 --> 00:09:02,120
Speaker 1: were catching some sort of pox from this this cow

173
00:09:02,200 --> 00:09:04,959
Speaker 1: pox from the cows and uh and you know they

174
00:09:05,000 --> 00:09:07,120
Speaker 1: suffered through that. But then after they've had cow pox,

175
00:09:07,920 --> 00:09:11,600
Speaker 1: they're immune to smallpox. Really. Yeah, So he started studying

176
00:09:11,600 --> 00:09:14,199
Speaker 1: this phenomenon, hanging out with more and more dairy maids.

177
00:09:17,040 --> 00:09:19,959
Speaker 1: You know, cow pox is still around, so it's beaver pox.

178
00:09:20,600 --> 00:09:22,840
Speaker 1: I've not heard of beaver I just made that one up.

179
00:09:22,840 --> 00:09:26,480
Speaker 1: I'm kidding, there's no beaver pox. So eventually Jenner decided

180
00:09:26,520 --> 00:09:29,000
Speaker 1: to see if he could um, if he could transfer

181
00:09:29,040 --> 00:09:32,680
Speaker 1: immunity to smallpox by infecting someone with cow pox on purpose.

182
00:09:33,360 --> 00:09:35,440
Speaker 1: So he found, uh, this little boy by the name

183
00:09:35,480 --> 00:09:38,400
Speaker 1: of James Phipps. Okay, what did James Phipps parents make

184
00:09:38,440 --> 00:09:40,640
Speaker 1: of this? By the way, those are kind of good

185
00:09:40,640 --> 00:09:44,920
Speaker 1: old days of human experimentation. Yeah, because I mean it

186
00:09:45,040 --> 00:09:48,440
Speaker 1: gets kind of ground because the way he decided to

187
00:09:48,440 --> 00:09:51,560
Speaker 1: to to essentially vaccinate him that we didn't really know

188
00:09:51,600 --> 00:09:53,600
Speaker 1: it was gonna work, you know, it was still an

189
00:09:53,600 --> 00:09:56,600
Speaker 1: experimental phase. Was he made cuts on the boy's arms

190
00:09:56,840 --> 00:09:59,560
Speaker 1: and then inserted some fluid from the cow pox source

191
00:10:00,240 --> 00:10:02,080
Speaker 1: of a local dairymaid that he was hanging out with

192
00:10:02,640 --> 00:10:08,360
Speaker 1: named Sarah Sarah Elms. And so the kid uh contracted

193
00:10:08,400 --> 00:10:12,680
Speaker 1: cow pox and then recovered and was then immune to smallpox. Right, So,

194
00:10:12,840 --> 00:10:15,319
Speaker 1: forty eight days later, Jenner said, okay, you had your

195
00:10:15,720 --> 00:10:17,559
Speaker 1: cow pox cuts, let's see what you're going to do

196
00:10:17,600 --> 00:10:20,280
Speaker 1: a smallpox And sure enough he exposed him and he

197
00:10:20,320 --> 00:10:22,880
Speaker 1: found out that the boy was immune, proving gender's theory correct.

198
00:10:24,880 --> 00:10:27,680
Speaker 1: Fast forward, uh a little while, and uh there's no

199
00:10:27,720 --> 00:10:30,360
Speaker 1: more you know, and then you have a powerful small

200
00:10:30,400 --> 00:10:35,800
Speaker 1: pox vaccine going on. So pretty cool. So let's talk

201
00:10:35,840 --> 00:10:38,080
Speaker 1: a little chemistry. Although the scientists at the center of

202
00:10:38,080 --> 00:10:41,600
Speaker 1: our next experiment. Considered himself a physicist, not a chemist.

203
00:10:42,080 --> 00:10:44,079
Speaker 1: He was the man who once said, have you heard

204
00:10:44,120 --> 00:10:47,240
Speaker 1: this quote? All science is either physics or stamp collecting,

205
00:10:47,720 --> 00:10:50,200
Speaker 1: and he was talking about the scientific method. I assume

206
00:10:51,000 --> 00:10:53,520
Speaker 1: I had not heard that quote. So the man in

207
00:10:53,640 --> 00:10:56,520
Speaker 1: question is Ernest Rutherford, and he's a pretty amazing guy.

208
00:10:57,120 --> 00:10:59,480
Speaker 1: He's born in New Zealand. He's one of twelve children.

209
00:11:00,080 --> 00:11:03,280
Speaker 1: That's a large, large New Zealand family, or any family.

210
00:11:05,200 --> 00:11:07,320
Speaker 1: He's the guy who came up with listen to this.

211
00:11:07,360 --> 00:11:09,240
Speaker 1: He's a guy who came up with the principles of alpha,

212
00:11:09,280 --> 00:11:13,040
Speaker 1: beta and gamme rays, the proton, the newtron, half lift,

213
00:11:13,080 --> 00:11:16,000
Speaker 1: and daughter Adams. One guy came up with all that.

214
00:11:16,480 --> 00:11:18,640
Speaker 1: Quite a role. Yeah, I've heard him called the father

215
00:11:18,720 --> 00:11:24,320
Speaker 1: of nuclear physics, and that's seems appropriate enough. And future

216
00:11:24,320 --> 00:11:27,760
Speaker 1: biggie's like Neils Bore Oppenheimer and James Chadwick, I'll looked

217
00:11:27,760 --> 00:11:29,840
Speaker 1: to him for guidance. But we're going to talk about

218
00:11:29,840 --> 00:11:32,600
Speaker 1: one of his adventures with the atomic nucleus and revealing

219
00:11:32,640 --> 00:11:34,640
Speaker 1: the structure of the atom. So let's talk about the

220
00:11:35,040 --> 00:11:39,240
Speaker 1: what Rutherford was doing. Basically, he's carrying off a kind

221
00:11:39,240 --> 00:11:42,000
Speaker 1: of a simple experiment, and uh and one that you

222
00:11:42,080 --> 00:11:45,200
Speaker 1: can you can you can reproduce at home. All you

223
00:11:45,240 --> 00:11:47,720
Speaker 1: need is what a You need an alpha ray emitter

224
00:11:48,360 --> 00:11:51,040
Speaker 1: or some sort of like alpha ray gun. Right, You

225
00:11:51,080 --> 00:11:54,079
Speaker 1: need some gold foil. Yeah, and you need a scentilator.

226
00:11:54,400 --> 00:11:57,920
Speaker 1: What's that, Well, scentilator is essentially back in the day,

227
00:11:57,960 --> 00:12:00,760
Speaker 1: it was a screen coated with stink soul fund and

228
00:12:00,840 --> 00:12:02,600
Speaker 1: it helps you to figure out where the particles were

229
00:12:02,640 --> 00:12:06,000
Speaker 1: going after you fired them, after after you fired them. Okay,

230
00:12:06,040 --> 00:12:07,920
Speaker 1: well that maybe a little hard to get a hold off,

231
00:12:07,920 --> 00:12:10,800
Speaker 1: but still these are the main elements of the experiment.

232
00:12:11,120 --> 00:12:13,320
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the experiment. It was also called

233
00:12:13,320 --> 00:12:17,440
Speaker 1: the Geiger Marsden experiment, named after a Hans Geiger gold

234
00:12:17,440 --> 00:12:22,480
Speaker 1: foil experiment though sounds. So here's what they did. They

235
00:12:22,520 --> 00:12:25,000
Speaker 1: got a source of radioactive particles, like Robert was just

236
00:12:25,120 --> 00:12:28,079
Speaker 1: leading to. They fired them through these really thin foils

237
00:12:28,120 --> 00:12:30,080
Speaker 1: like gold, and by thin we mean one or two

238
00:12:30,120 --> 00:12:34,440
Speaker 1: atoms thick, super super super thin, and they encircled their

239
00:12:34,440 --> 00:12:37,440
Speaker 1: whole set up with aforementioned detecting screen, the scintillator, the

240
00:12:37,640 --> 00:12:40,200
Speaker 1: screen that was gonna tell them where the particles were going.

241
00:12:40,240 --> 00:12:43,360
Speaker 1: After they fired them. So what Rutherford and Cove figured

242
00:12:43,400 --> 00:12:46,800
Speaker 1: out was that most of the radioactive particles were actually

243
00:12:46,800 --> 00:12:50,480
Speaker 1: firing straight through the foil. Okay, that makes sense. And

244
00:12:50,520 --> 00:12:53,600
Speaker 1: then a few of the particles were being deflected at

245
00:12:53,679 --> 00:12:56,760
Speaker 1: at a smaller angle, and then a very tiny portion

246
00:12:56,880 --> 00:12:59,920
Speaker 1: of the particles were being reflected back at a large angle.

247
00:13:00,080 --> 00:13:02,880
Speaker 1: And like we were saying earlier, the deflection tell us

248
00:13:02,880 --> 00:13:06,040
Speaker 1: that there's something going on inside the material that they're

249
00:13:06,040 --> 00:13:10,840
Speaker 1: that they're passing through. Right. So Rutherford, Geiger, and Marsden

250
00:13:10,880 --> 00:13:12,120
Speaker 1: took that to me and that there was a lot

251
00:13:12,120 --> 00:13:14,600
Speaker 1: of quote unquote empty space and atoms allowing all those

252
00:13:14,640 --> 00:13:17,520
Speaker 1: radioactive particles to pass straight through to the particle screen

253
00:13:17,640 --> 00:13:20,800
Speaker 1: or to the the scintillator. But it was the sharp

254
00:13:20,880 --> 00:13:24,839
Speaker 1: deflections that intrigued them the most. And so their conclusion

255
00:13:25,080 --> 00:13:27,440
Speaker 1: was that there was a strong positive charge at the

256
00:13:27,480 --> 00:13:30,920
Speaker 1: heart of the gold atoms that was deflecting those particles

257
00:13:30,960 --> 00:13:34,000
Speaker 1: almost straight back toward the source. And he called this

258
00:13:34,080 --> 00:13:36,720
Speaker 1: strong positive source that was doing the deflection the nucleus,

259
00:13:37,400 --> 00:13:39,520
Speaker 1: And he said the nucleus must be small compared to

260
00:13:39,559 --> 00:13:42,679
Speaker 1: the atoms overall size, otherwise more you would have had

261
00:13:42,679 --> 00:13:44,920
Speaker 1: more particles bouncing back right. So yeah, so he basically

262
00:13:44,920 --> 00:13:47,640
Speaker 1: met the inside of the atom. So today we still

263
00:13:47,679 --> 00:13:51,120
Speaker 1: visualized atom as Rutherford did, a small positively charged nucleus

264
00:13:51,120 --> 00:13:54,440
Speaker 1: surrounded by a vast firstly populated region with a couple

265
00:13:54,480 --> 00:13:56,840
Speaker 1: of electrons. Wow, so you can you can really tell

266
00:13:56,880 --> 00:14:00,800
Speaker 1: a lot about something by firing some radiation through it.

267
00:14:00,800 --> 00:14:04,439
Speaker 1: It's such a simple experiment, but it's so brilliant. It

268
00:14:04,600 --> 00:14:07,520
Speaker 1: is brilliant. Right. So we mentioned X ray diffraction a

269
00:14:07,559 --> 00:14:09,679
Speaker 1: little bit earlier. When we're talking about DNA, we're talking

270
00:14:09,720 --> 00:14:12,840
Speaker 1: about Rosalind Franklin and her X ray defraction studies. But

271
00:14:13,280 --> 00:14:15,280
Speaker 1: as we pointed out, her work wrote a lot to

272
00:14:15,400 --> 00:14:18,160
Speaker 1: Dorothy Krowfet Hodgkin. She was one of only three women

273
00:14:18,200 --> 00:14:22,880
Speaker 1: ever to win the Nobel Prize in chemistry, and Hodgkin

274
00:14:22,960 --> 00:14:26,360
Speaker 1: was pretty darn good at X ray diffraction, so it's

275
00:14:26,400 --> 00:14:29,120
Speaker 1: not really surprising that she eventually revealed the structure of

276
00:14:29,680 --> 00:14:33,600
Speaker 1: pretty much one of medicine's most important chemicals, penicillin. Indeed,

277
00:14:34,720 --> 00:14:39,440
Speaker 1: so back in Alexander Fleming had discovered the bacteria killing substance,

278
00:14:39,800 --> 00:14:43,040
Speaker 1: but scientists had a really hard time purifying the chemical

279
00:14:43,160 --> 00:14:46,840
Speaker 1: in order to develop an effective treatment. So what Hodgkin

280
00:14:46,880 --> 00:14:48,840
Speaker 1: did was she mapped out the three D arrangement of

281
00:14:48,880 --> 00:14:53,200
Speaker 1: penicillin's atoms, and essentially she opened all these new avenues

282
00:14:53,240 --> 00:14:57,520
Speaker 1: for creating and developing semisynthetic derivatives of penicillin. Yeah, it's

283
00:14:57,520 --> 00:14:59,880
Speaker 1: like when hackers like break the code for something like

284
00:15:00,280 --> 00:15:02,760
Speaker 1: DVD encryption, you know, so that they can rip it.

285
00:15:02,760 --> 00:15:05,400
Speaker 1: It's like like, here was something that was really important

286
00:15:05,400 --> 00:15:08,600
Speaker 1: to his penicillin, and in in fact she allowed us

287
00:15:08,600 --> 00:15:11,600
Speaker 1: to crack it do more with it, right, but telling

288
00:15:11,680 --> 00:15:14,040
Speaker 1: us all that stuff about the molecular structures she helped

289
00:15:14,080 --> 00:15:16,480
Speaker 1: out a lot. And in this case what she did

290
00:15:16,560 --> 00:15:21,000
Speaker 1: was after two different companies center penicillin crystals, Hodgkin pass

291
00:15:21,040 --> 00:15:23,400
Speaker 1: those X ray waves through the crystals and allowed the

292
00:15:23,520 --> 00:15:26,280
Speaker 1: radiation to strike this photographic plate. We did cover this

293
00:15:26,280 --> 00:15:28,960
Speaker 1: a little bit before, so as the X rays interacted

294
00:15:28,960 --> 00:15:32,480
Speaker 1: with the electrons in those sample there to fracked and

295
00:15:32,520 --> 00:15:36,560
Speaker 1: reveals the interstructure excellent. And then she went on to

296
00:15:36,920 --> 00:15:40,520
Speaker 1: deal with other structures, right, like vitamin B twelve she did,

297
00:15:40,640 --> 00:15:44,480
Speaker 1: she did, and yeah, penicillin was indeed the big one,

298
00:15:44,720 --> 00:15:46,640
Speaker 1: and of course she she won the Nobel PRIs in

299
00:15:46,720 --> 00:15:49,800
Speaker 1: Chemistry unshared in which is a big deal. Usually they're

300
00:15:50,160 --> 00:15:55,240
Speaker 1: scientists selfish. I don't know about that. So wow, those

301
00:15:55,280 --> 00:15:58,320
Speaker 1: are those are some world changing experiments right there. I

302
00:15:58,320 --> 00:16:02,560
Speaker 1: feel a little change just talking of Um, I feel inspired. Yeah,

303
00:16:02,680 --> 00:16:04,680
Speaker 1: I hope there are some world changing experiments going on

304
00:16:04,840 --> 00:16:06,960
Speaker 1: right now. I'm gonna fire some radiation through some stuff

305
00:16:07,080 --> 00:16:09,240
Speaker 1: just to see what's going on. We need to get

306
00:16:09,240 --> 00:16:12,680
Speaker 1: back to your desk. Yeah, yeah, what's going on in

307
00:16:12,680 --> 00:16:15,720
Speaker 1: that cup of coffee. Well, the thing is, if you're

308
00:16:15,760 --> 00:16:18,480
Speaker 1: inspired by our world changing experiments, be sure to listen

309
00:16:18,560 --> 00:16:20,520
Speaker 1: to part two because we've got more of these coming up.

310
00:16:21,200 --> 00:16:23,520
Speaker 1: And um, and there's gonna be the last radiation passing

311
00:16:23,560 --> 00:16:25,040
Speaker 1: through things in that one. So if you want is

312
00:16:25,120 --> 00:16:29,160
Speaker 1: endo that in this this podcast, then there's gonna be

313
00:16:29,200 --> 00:16:31,000
Speaker 1: less next time. Yeah, we're going to get into some

314
00:16:31,040 --> 00:16:34,080
Speaker 1: cool stuff like determining the speed of light. Yeah, primordial

315
00:16:34,120 --> 00:16:38,400
Speaker 1: suite dogs, all sorts of good stuff. Right. So, if

316
00:16:38,440 --> 00:16:39,720
Speaker 1: you want to go to the home page and look

317
00:16:39,800 --> 00:16:41,720
Speaker 1: up some cool experiments in the meantime, just type in

318
00:16:41,760 --> 00:16:44,480
Speaker 1: science experiments and you'll get ten science experiments to change

319
00:16:44,520 --> 00:16:48,080
Speaker 1: the world. Also, check out our blog where we update

320
00:16:48,120 --> 00:16:51,640
Speaker 1: you on all sorts of cool things going on involving say,

321
00:16:51,680 --> 00:16:55,480
Speaker 1: the world of energy and uh and hey Twitter, Facebook,

322
00:16:55,520 --> 00:16:57,840
Speaker 1: We're on there as well. Lab stuff on Twitter, lab

323
00:16:57,920 --> 00:17:00,240
Speaker 1: stuff or stuff in the Science Lab on face. Look.

324
00:17:00,280 --> 00:17:03,080
Speaker 1: If you guys want to talk science, we're there for you. Yes,

325
00:17:03,360 --> 00:17:08,159
Speaker 1: sign up at us, interact with us, send us an

326
00:17:08,200 --> 00:17:11,240
Speaker 1: email at science stuff at how stuff dot com. Thanks

327
00:17:11,280 --> 00:17:21,399
Speaker 1: for listening, guys. For more on this and thousands of

328
00:17:21,400 --> 00:17:24,760
Speaker 1: other topics, does it how stuff works dot com. Want

329
00:17:24,800 --> 00:17:27,439
Speaker 1: more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the

330
00:17:27,480 --> 00:17:29,119
Speaker 1: house stuff works dot com home page