Bill Nye 100 Greatest Discoveries in Chemistry
1.
John Priestley discovered _______________. He took a powder compound and heated it
until it became mercury and a gas or "new air". Antoine Lavoisier also studied
_________________. He is said to have invented oxygen. He used equipment that was
able to weigh the emitted air, and he called it oxygen. He also developed a list of many of
the elements which we still use today.
2.
John Dalton showed that elements combine in constant proportions, therefore that must be
made up of smaller invisible pieces of matter with distinctive weights, which he later called
________________ weights. The pieces of matter he called ______________. This atomic
theory defined relationships between elements and atoms.
3.
Joseph Gay Lassac found that equal volumes of gases combined would produce _____
times the volume he predicted. Amedeo Avogadro studied Lassac's finding. He concluded that
gases were made up of multiple atoms or _______________________. Now scientists could
systematically make new compounds.
4.
Fredrich Wohler made urea crystals using two inorganic chemicals. He found them to be
identical to crystal he had seen when working with urine. This discovery broke the wall between
organic and inorganic chemistry. The building blocks of all matter, whether organic or inorganic,
are the same - ______________.
5.
August Keckule developed a system for visualizing the chemical structures of various
molecules. He was able to ______________ structures because he knew atoms combined in
fixed ratios. He discovered the benzene ring, which began the modern era of organic chemistry.
6.
Dimitri Mendeleyev made out cards which the name, weight, and physical properties of
the 63 known _______________________. While placing them in an organized fashion, he
developed the ______________________________. He even predicted 3 elements that had
not been discovered yet. Element 101, mendolevium, is named for him.
7.
Scientist were just beginning to discover the anatomy of an _____________. They
wanted to understand its behavior, particularly the mechanism that allowed atoms of certain
elements to combine with atoms of other elements and form new substances. In the early
1900's Gilbert Lewis developed a ________________ of an atom. It explained that the
__________________ of atoms went in shells around the nuclei. Two chemical elements
combine and form a compound when one of them gives up or accepts an electron from an
___________________ shell. The discovery allowed scientists to create chemical compounds.
8.
In the 1890's Henri Becquerel tried to find minerals that emitted radiation to use for x-
rays. So using a _____________________ and black photography paper, he found that
_______________________ had radioactive activity. Madam and Pierre Curie then studied
tons of the uranium ore and discovered two new elements, Polonium and Radium. Radium
alone was a million times more radioactive than uranium. Radioactivity has given us medical
imaging, treatment for _____________________, helped determine the age of earth, and is
used as a _________________ source.
9.
In the 1860's John Hyatt found a way to make ___________________ after studying
strands of cellulose from plants. Leo Baekeland actually made a fully synthetic fiber, called
plastic. He made a polymer called Baekelite, from 2 chemicals derived from
__________________. Plastics are polymers, which are long chain molecules. Plastic was
pliable, strong, and surpassed natural fibers.
10.
In 1985, Richard Smalley, Robert Curl and Harold Kroto studied chemical conditions in
outer space, trying to find chemical relations between interstellar matter. They found one cluster
of _____________________ atoms with exactly _____________ atoms. They called it a
nanotube, or fullerene. They tried to add another carbon to it, but it wouldn't take it. The
fullerene is stiffer than steel and a _______________________. It is the strongest fiber ever.