MetaMaxNL
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I'm spending my work hours among horses and relax hours with the most expensive bunny of the province. Love a lot of life..to much to list. Highly entertaint by site as BP
MetaMaxNL • upvoted 13 items 1 day ago
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P1zzaman reply
I’m not sure if this counts, but Tetsuhiro Shikiyama (founder of Nippura, the company that makes thick acrylic glass for aquariums) invented the tech that glues/fuses multiple layers of clear acrylic when he dropped a udon noodle he was eating on some acrylic and had a hard time picking it up because it stuck.
quiidge reply
It's unlikely it would have remained undiscovered forever, but X-rays for medical imaging! The first x-ray image was an accidental exposure of a photographic plate the scientist's wife was holding - they didn't realise the rays would interact with it like visible light, and when they developed it her bones and wedding ring were visible. (This may have been the first clue they needed some safety precautions, too, but honestly all the early research into ionising radiation is terrifying. They didn't know what they were dealing with. The Curie's lab/offices are still tightly controlled due to all the radium and polonium contamination, for example.).
saluksic reply
Glass is a very difficult material to make, and it’s thought that the ancients only discovered it once (somewhere in the Middle East), and it spread to other places from there (unlike writing and agriculture which seem to have developed independently in several places). The difficulty in glass is down to the temperatures required and finding an appropriate source of alkali that isn’t in a salt form. It’s some kind of astonishing coincidence that anyone put such random rare minerals together in an appropriate crucible and fired it to very high temperatures. Glasses do exist in nature (lightning strikes on sand - a red herring since anyone trying to heat up sand to a similar temperature would have met with failure up until a hundred years ago or so; and obsidian for example), so some material scientist would have figured them out at some point in the Industrial Revolution or so. But another twist we have in our timeline is glass blowing. This was invented by the Romans about a thousand years after glass production began. It’s a very unintuitive and creative way to shape glass, and requires an artistic genius to invent. Had glass only become an industrial material a hundred to so years ago, it’s almost certain that the blowing techniques that give us art and things like lightbulbs would be elusive still. The final stepping stone is highly specialized glass such as the [dichronic](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichroic_glass) properties of the [Lycurgus cup](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycurgus_Cup), which is so rare as to be unique. The color of this glass depends on whether light is reflected off its surface or shining through it, appearing either green or red respectively. Created in 400 AD, recreations of this effect are exceptionally rare today and have never been mass produced. The effect is caused by insoluble gold and silver trace impurities in the glass ripening into nanoparticles of precise size and composition by heat treatment of the glass. Almost nothing in the world has these properties. Researchers are able to make one-off batches of this kind of glass, and even embed similar particles in [3D printed plastic](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6404512/), but carving a cup in glass is not yet automated and represents about two years of a skilled artisan’s time. In effect, manufacturing a glass of this color-effect and this carving is an invention that hasn’t quite occurred yet. .
dancingbanana123 reply
Oh I study math history, I can share some fun ones! Niels Abel is famous for a few things in mathematics, but the easiest one to explain is that he proved there does not exist a general formula to find the solutions to a polynomials where the highest exponent is 5 (i.e. there's no general formula to find all the solutions to something like x^(5) + x + 1 = 0). There's the quadratic formula for when your highest exponent is 2, there's another formula for when your highest exponent is 3, and another for 4, but Abel proved it's *impossible* to find one when the highest exponent is 5 or higher. It basically depends on the idea that some algebraic numbers cannot be simply represented with +, -, *, /, or exponents. Now Abel proved this when he was 21, but Abel grew up in poverty and had no way of actually sharing this solution with others. In fact, the only reason he was able to attend college was because 3 professors offered to cover the cost because they recognized his talent. He could only afford to print 6 pages of his proof, so he had to heavily abbreviate everything, cut large chunks of his proof, *and* wrote it all in shaky French (since Norwegian isn't a common language and he wanted to share it with other mathematicians in Europe). He ends up mailing a few copies of this proof to a few mathematicians, but all of them dismiss it because it'd be an outlandish claim and nobody wanted to parse this difficult-to-read proof. In fact, Abel's letter was found unopened on Gauss's desk after Gauss died. So despite proving this major result, nobody knew about it except for Abel and the small group of mathematicians around him in Norway. The professors at his university petitioned the government to help fund his travel around Europe to learn more math and share his work and surprisingly, the government decided to fund him. While in France, he stumbled across this guy named Crelle. Abel struck up a conversation with Crelle about math and they both started talking about unsolved problems. Crelle mentioned this problem about polynomials and Abel excited mentions that he solved that problem and showed him his proof. Crelle obviously couldn't make sense of Abel's proof, but he was so captivated by his conversation with Abel, he offered to print Abel's *full* proof. This print would later turn out to be the first publication by *Crelle's Journal*, one of the most influential journals in mathematics in all of European history. With this, people began to finally learn about Abel's proof and he began to gain some notoriety. Unfortunately, this would not end well for Abel. Abel submits another major result (Abel's theorem) to this major publication in Paris, where a committee is formed to review the submission. Unfortunately, one of the reviewers, Cauchy, just straight up loses the paper. Abel, running out of funding for his travels, is forced to return home with no success on this publication. He also loses out on a major job opportunity that could've taken him out of poverty, all because he was deemed too young and his childhood mentor and friend, Holmboe, gets the job instead. He ends up dying of TB just a few years later at the age of 26. Afterwards, another mathematician, Jacobi, is reading some of Abel's work and notices how great his work is. When he learns Cauchy lost Abel's paper, he pressures Cauchy to find this paper. Cauchy sends the paper off to be published posthumously, but it is lost at the printing press. It wouldn't be found for over 100 years later, in a whole other country somehow. Thankfully though, Holmboe published Abel's work separated to help share all of Abel's results and not let others forget him. Abel's life is full of misfortune, but also great friends trying their hardest to share their friend's greatness. While Abel doesn't end up succeeding during his life, I can't help but enjoy seeing how much all of his friends cared about him, and his own ability to make friends randomly with so many people. Abel today is commonly mentioned in any undergrad group theory course because of how influential his work is on modern algebra. Without the help of people like Crelle, Holmboe, and Jacobi, we wouldn't be recognizing this work today.Show All 6 Upvotes
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Curiosities
"Student Licked His Finger": 28 Things That Were Discovered By Accident And Ended Up Being Useful
P1zzaman reply
I’m not sure if this counts, but Tetsuhiro Shikiyama (founder of Nippura, the company that makes thick acrylic glass for aquariums) invented the tech that glues/fuses multiple layers of clear acrylic when he dropped a udon noodle he was eating on some acrylic and had a hard time picking it up because it stuck.dancingbanana123 reply
Oh I study math history, I can share some fun ones! Niels Abel is famous for a few things in mathematics, but the easiest one to explain is that he proved there does not exist a general formula to find the solutions to a polynomials where the highest exponent is 5 (i.e. there's no general formula to find all the solutions to something like x^(5) + x + 1 = 0). There's the quadratic formula for when your highest exponent is 2, there's another formula for when your highest exponent is 3, and another for 4, but Abel proved it's *impossible* to find one when the highest exponent is 5 or higher. It basically depends on the idea that some algebraic numbers cannot be simply represented with +, -, *, /, or exponents. Now Abel proved this when he was 21, but Abel grew up in poverty and had no way of actually sharing this solution with others. In fact, the only reason he was able to attend college was because 3 professors offered to cover the cost because they recognized his talent. He could only afford to print 6 pages of his proof, so he had to heavily abbreviate everything, cut large chunks of his proof, *and* wrote it all in shaky French (since Norwegian isn't a common language and he wanted to share it with other mathematicians in Europe). He ends up mailing a few copies of this proof to a few mathematicians, but all of them dismiss it because it'd be an outlandish claim and nobody wanted to parse this difficult-to-read proof. In fact, Abel's letter was found unopened on Gauss's desk after Gauss died. So despite proving this major result, nobody knew about it except for Abel and the small group of mathematicians around him in Norway. The professors at his university petitioned the government to help fund his travel around Europe to learn more math and share his work and surprisingly, the government decided to fund him. While in France, he stumbled across this guy named Crelle. Abel struck up a conversation with Crelle about math and they both started talking about unsolved problems. Crelle mentioned this problem about polynomials and Abel excited mentions that he solved that problem and showed him his proof. Crelle obviously couldn't make sense of Abel's proof, but he was so captivated by his conversation with Abel, he offered to print Abel's *full* proof. This print would later turn out to be the first publication by *Crelle's Journal*, one of the most influential journals in mathematics in all of European history. With this, people began to finally learn about Abel's proof and he began to gain some notoriety. Unfortunately, this would not end well for Abel. Abel submits another major result (Abel's theorem) to this major publication in Paris, where a committee is formed to review the submission. Unfortunately, one of the reviewers, Cauchy, just straight up loses the paper. Abel, running out of funding for his travels, is forced to return home with no success on this publication. He also loses out on a major job opportunity that could've taken him out of poverty, all because he was deemed too young and his childhood mentor and friend, Holmboe, gets the job instead. He ends up dying of TB just a few years later at the age of 26. Afterwards, another mathematician, Jacobi, is reading some of Abel's work and notices how great his work is. When he learns Cauchy lost Abel's paper, he pressures Cauchy to find this paper. Cauchy sends the paper off to be published posthumously, but it is lost at the printing press. It wouldn't be found for over 100 years later, in a whole other country somehow. Thankfully though, Holmboe published Abel's work separated to help share all of Abel's results and not let others forget him. Abel's life is full of misfortune, but also great friends trying their hardest to share their friend's greatness. While Abel doesn't end up succeeding during his life, I can't help but enjoy seeing how much all of his friends cared about him, and his own ability to make friends randomly with so many people. Abel today is commonly mentioned in any undergrad group theory course because of how influential his work is on modern algebra. Without the help of people like Crelle, Holmboe, and Jacobi, we wouldn't be recognizing this work today.quiidge reply
It's unlikely it would have remained undiscovered forever, but X-rays for medical imaging! The first x-ray image was an accidental exposure of a photographic plate the scientist's wife was holding - they didn't realise the rays would interact with it like visible light, and when they developed it her bones and wedding ring were visible. (This may have been the first clue they needed some safety precautions, too, but honestly all the early research into ionising radiation is terrifying. They didn't know what they were dealing with. The Curie's lab/offices are still tightly controlled due to all the radium and polonium contamination, for example.).saluksic reply
Glass is a very difficult material to make, and it’s thought that the ancients only discovered it once (somewhere in the Middle East), and it spread to other places from there (unlike writing and agriculture which seem to have developed independently in several places). The difficulty in glass is down to the temperatures required and finding an appropriate source of alkali that isn’t in a salt form. It’s some kind of astonishing coincidence that anyone put such random rare minerals together in an appropriate crucible and fired it to very high temperatures. Glasses do exist in nature (lightning strikes on sand - a red herring since anyone trying to heat up sand to a similar temperature would have met with failure up until a hundred years ago or so; and obsidian for example), so some material scientist would have figured them out at some point in the Industrial Revolution or so. But another twist we have in our timeline is glass blowing. This was invented by the Romans about a thousand years after glass production began. It’s a very unintuitive and creative way to shape glass, and requires an artistic genius to invent. Had glass only become an industrial material a hundred to so years ago, it’s almost certain that the blowing techniques that give us art and things like lightbulbs would be elusive still. The final stepping stone is highly specialized glass such as the [dichronic](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichroic_glass) properties of the [Lycurgus cup](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycurgus_Cup), which is so rare as to be unique. The color of this glass depends on whether light is reflected off its surface or shining through it, appearing either green or red respectively. Created in 400 AD, recreations of this effect are exceptionally rare today and have never been mass produced. The effect is caused by insoluble gold and silver trace impurities in the glass ripening into nanoparticles of precise size and composition by heat treatment of the glass. Almost nothing in the world has these properties. Researchers are able to make one-off batches of this kind of glass, and even embed similar particles in [3D printed plastic](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6404512/), but carving a cup in glass is not yet automated and represents about two years of a skilled artisan’s time. In effect, manufacturing a glass of this color-effect and this carving is an invention that hasn’t quite occurred yet. . MetaMaxNL • is following 5 people
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