Hasta La Ideas

Image by deviantartist Ham549

Last week we revealed the first half of the top ten greatest moments in materials’ science history, according to The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society. This week we’ve got the remaining top five:

5.) Optical microscopy. OK this one is definitely big. Microscopes changed everything. Suddenly we were able to see a world 200+ times smaller than what we can see with our natural eyes. It was developed by Anton van Leeuwenhoek around 1668, and the design of the optical microscope has pretty much remained the same since. Even though Leeuwenhoek may not have “invented” the microscope, he is officially credited with popularizing it (and as we know from Apple, popularizing something is as important as inventing). The oldest drawing known to have been made with a microscope is the one on bees, up above.

4.) Glass. After ceramics, glass is the greatest non-metallic engineering material, according to The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society. Of course volcanic glass has been naturally found and used since the Stone Age, to make sharp cutting tools. But the first man-made form is thought to come from Northern Syria but glassmaking was practiced more formally in Iran. Apparently the elements of early glass included lime, soda and silica (beach sand). It wasn’t until the 19th Century that glass became more of an aesthetic art form, including jewelry and sculpture. To be sure, that in scientific terms the word ‘glass’ actually refers to a wide range of materials. Basically every solid that has a non-crystalline structure, which means its atoms are not arranged in a lattice form, and can move from a brittle to a molten-like state is called a glass.

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