Ben Franklin Stilled the Waves: An Informal History of Pouring Oil on Water with Reflections on the Ups and Downs of Scientific Life in General (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780192804945)

Benjamin Franklin was the first to report the phenomenon of oil's power to still troubled waters and to speculate on why it happened. A century later Lord Rayleigh performed an identical experiment. Irving Langmuir did it with minor variations in 1917, and won a Nobel Prize for it. Then Langmuir's work was followed by a Dutch pediatrician's in 1925. p Each experimenter saw a little more in the result than his predecessor had seen, and the sciences of physics, chemistry and biology have all been illuminated by the work. p Charles Tanford reflects on the evolving nature of science and of individual scientists. Recounting innovations in each trial, he follows the classic experiment from Franklin's drawing room to our present-day institutionalized scientific establishments and speculates on the ensuing changes in our approach to scientific inquiry.

Author: Charles Tanford
ISBN-10: 0192804944
ISBN-13: 9780192804945
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Language: English
Published: 06/10/2004
Pages: 269
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.44lbs
Size: 7.82h x 5.00w x 0.60d

Review Citation(s):
Scitech Book News 12/01/2004 pg. 13