Helium is a very common element in our universe. However, due to its characteristics, it's very rarely found on Earth. This video shows how scientists in the 19th century overcame this obstacle, over the course of decades, and isolated and discovered the rare gas. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com

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For over two centuries, Newton’s law of gravity accurately predicted the motions of all the planets in the solar system. But that all changed in 1859, when French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier discovered a strange anomaly regarding mercury’s orbit. This led to a problem in Newton's reality that didn't have an answer until Albert Einstein proposed General Relativity in 1915. Einstein accurately modeled Mercury's orbit with GR, but it wasn't enough for his theory to be accepted as fact. He needed to predict a testable anomaly that had been previously unobserved, and one of his predictions was light bending around the Sun. In 1919, that prediction was put to the test, and what was found would make Einstein a worldwide celebrity practically overnight. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com

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In the 1770s, a revolution in chemistry had just begun, starting in Uppsala, Sweden. A young apothecary named Carl Wilhelm Scheele began a series of experiments that led to the eventual downfall of an entire theory of fire that had dominated chemistry for a century. This theory was known as the theory of phlogiston; phlogiston was an invisible substance that released from materials when they burned and was absorbed by air or other substances. Scheele supported phlogiston from his results, but his went unpublished for five years, leading to another chemist, Joseph Priestley, getting credit for the discovery of what Scheele called "fire air." This is the story of how Scheele, Priestley, and a French chemist named Antoine Lavoisier discovered a substance that would eventually tackle the theory of phlogiston and replace it with a new theory of oxygen. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com

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Ever since the discovery of the proton in 1919 by Ernest Rutherford, scientists had been on a mission to break atoms apart, splitting them into their smaller components in hopes of changing elements into others. This was first successfully done by two of Rutherford's pupils, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, in 1932 after their invention of the world's first particle accelerator. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com

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In 1887, physicists Albert Michelson and Edward Morley discovered a new phenomenon that would come to be known as the fine structure of spectral lines. These spectral lines split into two or more components, and other effects like the Zeeman and Stark effects also showed cases where spectral lines split. The quest to answer why this happened took almost 40 years and would end with the discovery of a new characteristic of an electron known as "spin". Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com

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Technetium is quite an interesting element and has just as interesting of a history. Many had tried to discover it and failed, and this is because of how unstable all of its isotopes are. The only way to discover the element was to make it ourselves, and that was finally done in 1937. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com

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In the 1780s, an Italian physicist named Luigi Galvani made a shocking discovering when experimenting with the remains of frogs. He found that when he touched a the nerves of a frog with a lancet, and at the same time, discharged electricity from an electrostatic machine nearby, the frog legs would kick. This would spark a century-long slew of discoveries and theory that would eventually lead to the discover of the invisible radiation known today as radio waves. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com

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The weights of atoms and molecules are quite precise today, but has quite a long and complicated history. This video dives into the very beginning of that history, right when modern atomic theory was beginning to surface. John Dalton is the inventor of relative atomic weight, and his ideas were instrumental in getting atomic theory off the ground and running. Not only does this video cover Dalton's contribution, but also two scientists after him that destroyed his initial theory less than a decade after he published it. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com

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In 600 BC, Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus noticed that the gemstone amber attracted light objects when it was rubbed against a cloth. Unbeknownst to him, he had discovered the phenomenon of static electricity. But how did humanity progress from this knowledge of a certain gemstone to powering machines with batteries? The answer lies in two centuries of innovation starting shortly after the beginning of the scientific revolution. This video doesn't cover everything, but does cover the most important steps during the early era of electricity, starting from William Gilbert and ending with Michael Faraday.

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After the discovery of beta radiation by Ernest Rutherford in 1898 and the formulation of the mass-equivalency relation by Einstein in 1905, scientists realized that beta radiation was behaving in an odd way. The expected kinetic energy of the beta particles was less than expected and spread out over a spectrum as opposed to the expected single value. Some thought energy conservation was being violated, but a few scientists thought outside the box and proposed a new elementary particle, the neutrino, that would keep energy conserved and save the physics of beta decay. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com

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