Lecture 5: The Chemical Revolution and the Nature of Matter

What is the nature of matter, and how did we come to understand the

chemical elements and atomic structure? This lecture is a brief and

selective overview of the history of our understanding of the nature of

matter and chemistry. We will also introduce spectroscopy and

radioactivity, two very powerful tools that came out of the chemical

revolution that are crucial for the inquiry in this class into the

question of life on other worlds. Recorded live on 2009 Sep 29 in Room

1005 Smith Laboratory on the Columbus campus of The Ohio State

University.