My Science School

Peter Henlein, a locksmith from Nuremburg, Germany, is considered as the inventor of the modern day watch. He was one of the first craftsmen to make small ornamental Taschenuhren, portable clocks worn as pendants or attached to clothing, which were regarded as the first watches. The Pomander Watch is one of the world's earliest known portable timepieces and is thought to have been made by Henlein in 1505.

Peter Henlein was born in 1485, and very little is known about his early life. It is most probable that he became apprentice as a repair man and locksmith. His appearance in history books start on September 7, 1504 after he was involved in a brawl in which his friend and fellow locksmith George Glaser was killed. Peter immediately went to the local Franciscan monastery where he found safety. Four years later he returned to the Nuremberg where he became one of the most famous locksmiths, who was especially praised for his ability to create small spring-powered brass clock which were then very rare and expensive. With such popularity, it was not strange that local and distant nobility contacted him on regular basis, demanding ever more beautiful and smaller clock designs. As far historical records are concerned, Peter’s first clock was made in 1510, and by 1541 he was well known for his craft and has been tasked on building not only small clocks but also big tower clock for Lichtenau castle.

Even though his spring designs were not particular accurate (they could lose several hours during one day’s work) or even portable (with around 3 inches in size, they were more suited to be worn as a pendant than in pocket), clocks that were made by Peter Henlein soon became sensation in Europe scientific circles and later on by general European population.

Today, Peter Henlein is regarded as a father of modern clocks even though he was not the first locksmith that made small clock designs or was responsible for the discovery of key clock component –mainspring. He died in 1547 knowing that his invention will live forever.

Credit : History of watch

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We've all been there: our smartphone slips out of our hands and crashes to the floor. A good case and screen protector might protect you from the worst of the damage, but can only do so much. That's where the ADcase comes into play. The case senses when it is in free-fall, quickly releasing eight legs from its corners which hit the ground preventing your smartphone's expensive and fragile parts from coming into contact with the ground. The spring-loaded 30 mm metal legs can be inserted back into the case, ready to go the next time you drop your phone. The case also includes an extra battery which can be charged by cable 00 or wirelessly. The ADcase is limited to recent iPhone models like the 6/6 Plus. The creator of this device has also won the top award from the German Society for Mechatronics for his phone case, even though the design is still a prototype. The thought struck Philip Frenzel, a 25-year-old engineering student at Aalen University in Germany when he broke his smartphone by hurling his jacket on the banister. Frenzel then started working on equipment that would save the phones from damage after an accidental drop

After four years of fiddling with the equipment, he came up with the phone case that houses sensors that can detect when the phone is falling. The case appears to work perfectly on flat surfaces, but there is no indication that results would be as solid if the phone is dropped on a jagged or uneven edge.

Credit : India Today

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Gregor Mendel is known as the Father of Genetics. He experimented on pea plants and discovered the basic inheritance rules. Gregor Johann Mendel  was a meteorologist, mathematician, biologist, Augustinian friar and abbot of St. Thomas' Abbey in Brno, Margraviate of Moravia. Mendel was born in a German-speaking family in the Silesian part of the Austrian Empire (today's Czech Republic) and gained posthumous recognition as the founder of the modern science of genetics. Though farmers had known for millennia that crossbreeding of animals and plants could favor certain desirable traits, Mendel's pea plant experiments conducted between 1856 and 1863 established many of the rules of heredity, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance.

Mendel worked with seven characteristics of pea plants: plant height, pod shape and color, seed shape and color, and flower position and color. Taking seed color as an example, Mendel showed that when a true-breeding yellow pea and a true-breeding green pea were cross-bred their offspring always produced yellow seeds. However, in the next generation, the green peas reappeared at a ratio of 1 green to 3 yellow. To explain this phenomenon, Mendel coined the terms "recessive" and "dominant" in reference to certain traits. In the preceding example, the green trait, which seems to have vanished in the first filial generation, is recessive and the yellow is dominant. He published his work in 1866, demonstrating the actions of invisible "factors"—now called genes—in predictably determining the traits of an organism.

The profound significance of Mendel's work was not recognized until the turn of the 20th century (more than three decades later) with the rediscovery of his laws. Erich von Tschermak, Hugo de Vries and Carl Correns independently verified several of Mendel's experimental findings in 1900, ushering in the modern age of genetics.

Credit : wikipedia

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