Assignment 3: Questions of Cosmic Alchemy Video (Universe-Part 3)
Questions on the video clip (Questions refers to the first 30 min of the video)
1. What did alchemists seek to create?
They want to take a primal substance to make another substance into gold.
2. What were the four elements according to alchemy and other prescientific systems?
Everything in the universe were composed of the four elements: earth, water, fire, and air.
Earth gives form and substance to things. Water is like a universal solvent. Fire brings
energy, light, and heat. Air gives some space and movement. Primal matter; dung, urine,
unspeakable matters.
3. What was Mendeleyev's first experience of chemistry?
In a glass factory, how they glass is formed and how it changes colours.
4. The rapid development of chemistry was spurred on by what economic
phenomenon?
The height of the industrial revolution, there are demands mass production. Entrepreneurs
wants to understand what things are made of.
5. How many elements did scientists know about in Mendeleyev’s time?
Chemists believed there are about 65 elements (gasses, liquids, and solids).
6. Why did Mendeleev go to St Petersburg to study science?
His family’s glass factory burnt down, and his mother brought him to St Petersburg to study.
7. What technique did Mendeleyev use to create the periodic table?
He sorted the elements in a logical order.
8. What properties did he use to sort the elements?
He arranged the elements increasing in atomic mass.
9. What did he notice about the weights of different elements and how did he use the
observation to make predictions?
He sorted them from metal to non-metal characters and rearranged them.
10. What was the heaviest element in his system?
Uranium
11. Who was the next scientist to take up the study of uranium?
Marie Curie
12. What is the ore (raw material) that uranium is taken from?
Pitchblende
13. What other two elements did the scientist discover in this ore?
Polonium and radium
14. What did they observe happening during the radioactive decay of radium?
It has a beautiful colour; it emits light with enough radium. They managed to measure to the
element gave of.
15. Who was the scientist who started to investigate radioactivity and the structure of
the atom?
Ernest Rutherford
16. Where are the instruments that he used stored?
Canada’s McGill University
17. What did he discover was happening during the decay of radium?
It produces a vapor that is not radium.
18. What was the implication of this observation?
Radium produces another element with a different atomic weight, helium.
19. How does Einstein's theory of special relativity relate to radioactive decay?
How the chemical elements came to be. He believes that mass could be converted into
energy.
20. What is the meaning of the formula E = mc2 (squared)?
Energy = mass times speed of light squared
21. How does Einstein see matter?
Something like a battery, a form of stored energy.
22. How would you describe the methods of the scientist in question 15?
He used electric stimulation using radium, he defined the atom structure.