Michael Faraday's The Chemical History of a Candle

Michael Faraday's The Chemical History of a Candle
Author: William S Hammack
Publisher:
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2016-05-20
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780983966180

This book is a companion to the EngineerGuy YouTube series of Michael Faraday's 19th century lectures on The Chemical History of a Candle. This books contains the lectures, 14 illustrations, introductory guides and seven student activities with teaching guides.

The Chemical History of a Candle

The Chemical History of a Candle
Author: Michael Faraday
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
Total Pages: 146
Release: 2020-09-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1465608176

From the primitive pine-torch to the paraffin candle, how wide an interval! between them how vast a contrast! The means adopted by man to illuminate his home at night, stamp at once his position in the scale of civilisation. The fluid bitumen of the far East, blazing in rude vessels of baked earth; the Etruscan lamp, exquisite in form, yet ill adapted to its office; the whale, seal, or bear fat, filling the hut of the Esquimaux or Lap with odour rather than light; the huge wax candle on the glittering altar, the range of gas lamps in our streets,—all have their stories to tell. All, if they could speak (and, after their own manner, they can), might warm our hearts in telling, how they have ministered to man's comfort, love of home, toil, and devotion. Surely, among the millions of fire-worshippers and fire-users who have passed away in earlier ages, some have pondered over the mystery of fire; perhaps some clear minds have guessed shrewdly near the truth. Think of the time man has lived in hopeless ignorance: think that only during a period which might be spanned by the life of one man, has the truth been known. Atom by atom, link by link, has the reasoning chain been forged. Some links, too quickly and too slightly made, have given way, and been replaced by better work; but now the great phenomena are known—the outline is correctly and firmly drawn—cunning artists are filling in the rest, and the child who masters these Lectures knows more of fire than Aristotle did. The candle itself is now made to light up the dark places of nature; the blowpipe and the prism are adding to our knowledge of the earth's crust; but the torch must come first.

Lectures on the Forces of Matter

Lectures on the Forces of Matter
Author: Michael Faraday
Publisher: The Floating Press
Total Pages: 127
Release: 2009-01-01
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1775413578

Self-taught chemist and scientist Michael Faraday was one of the most prolific and prescient researchers to emerge from England in the nineteenth century. In this captivating collection of talks and lectures, Faraday sets forth some of his most influential theories, findings, and conjectures.

Chemical Magic

Chemical Magic
Author: Leonard A. Ford
Publisher: Courier Corporation
Total Pages: 148
Release: 2012-09-19
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0486136736

Classic guide provides intriguing entertainment while elucidating sound scientific principles, with more than 100 unusual stunts: cold fire, dust explosions, a nylon rope trick, a disappearing beaker, much more.

The Elements: A Very Short Introduction

The Elements: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Philip Ball
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2004-04-08
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0192840991

This Very Short Introduction traces the history and cultural impact of the elements on humankind, and examines why people have long sought to identify the substances around them. Looking beyond the Periodic Table, the author takes the reader on an engaging and entertaining tour: from the Greek philosophers who propounded a system with four elements - earth, air, fire, and water - to the modern-day scientists who are able to create their own.

Uncle Tungsten

Uncle Tungsten
Author: Oliver Sacks
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2013-12-11
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0804172153

From the distinguished neurologist who is also one of the most remarkable storytellers of our time—a riveting memoir of his youth and his love affair with science, as unexpected and fascinating as his celebrated case histories. “A rare gem…. Fresh, joyous, wistful, generous, and tough-minded.” —The New York Times Book Review Long before Oliver Sacks became the bestselling author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Awakenings, he was a small English boy fascinated by metals—also by chemical reactions (the louder and smellier the better), photography, squids and cuttlefish, H.G. Wells, and the periodic table. In this endlessly charming and eloquent memoir, Sacks chronicles his love affair with science and the magnificently odd and sometimes harrowing childhood in which that love affair unfolded. In Uncle Tungsten we meet Sacks’ extraordinary family, from his surgeon mother (who introduces the fourteen-year-old Oliver to the art of human dissection) and his father, a family doctor who imbues in his son an early enthusiasm for housecalls, to his “Uncle Tungsten,” whose factory produces tungsten-filament lightbulbs. We follow the young Oliver as he is exiled at the age of six to a grim, sadistic boarding school to escape the London Blitz, and later watch as he sets about passionately reliving the exploits of his chemical heroes—in his own home laboratory. Uncle Tungsten is a crystalline view of a brilliant young mind springing to life, a story of growing up which is by turns elegiac, comic, and wistful, full of the electrifying joy of discovery.