Nobel Prize

344’2021 (2021-12-10) – Friday

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned about:

While we normally celebrate the birthday of a person who is no longer with us, be they famous or not, there are also some examples of when the day that person left us for good is also remembered. In Sweden, there are particularly two such events, November 6, 1632 when the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus (Gustav II Adolf) was killed in a battle close to Lützen during the 30-year religious war in continental Europe. Since he had founded the city of Gothenburg (Göteborg) 11 years earlier, on this day every year there are special pastries with his portrait on them. See also references #1 and #2 below.

Another such event happened on December 10, 1895 when the Swedish inventor and entrepreneur Alfred Nobel died, after that he earlier had made a will to donate a large sum of money to fund a prize to be given yearly to famous scientists. And so, on every December 10, starting 1901, with few interruptions due to conflicts, there have been the traditional hand-out of the Nobel Prize in five different catagories, expanded to six in 1968. And during the last two years, the prize giving ceremony has been decentralized due to the ongoing pandemic. See also reference #3 below.

Nowadays, there are also many complementary activities to the Nobel Prize. One such is a lecture given by one of the Nobel laurates in a way so that also non-scholars can follow along and appreciate it. This year, on December 8, 2021, the Physics laureate in 2006, George Smoot, talked about the Future of Space travel, and in it were some really fresh examples (updated the very same day) of what has been going during 2021. Really interesting! I had hoped to be able to publish a link to the lecture, but unfortunately it seems that it is not available any more. I talked to the organizers and they informed me that they had to remove the link due to copyright issues. However, in reference #4 below is a link to another event held in Gothenburg yesterday, called The City of the Future, organized by the Nobel Week Dialogue 2021. Enjoy!

That’s what I learned in school today!

Ref.:

1: Gustavus Adolphus

2: Gustavus Adolphus pastry

3: Nobel Prize

4: The City of the Future: Nobel Week Dialogue 2021

*: What did you learn in school today ?

2016-01-14 (Thursday)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned that:

There is something new in the world of chemistry, and although I am not very fond of chemistry, this is really thrilling. IUPAC (The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry), announced that four new elements of the periodic table (elements 113, 115, 117, and 118) have been discovered and approved. These elements complete the 7th row of the periodic table of the elements, and the discoverers from Japan, Russia, and the USA will now be invited to suggest permanent names and symbols.

IUPAC_Periodic_Table-8Jan16

The current Periodic Table of the Elements, Copyright © 2016 IUPAC, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry

Also, in the same podcast, The Naked Scientists, where these new elements were discussed, they talked about how the physicists Max von Laue and James Franck, who had won the Nobel Prize in 1914 and 1925, respectively, were able to save their golden medals from falling into Nazi hands during World War II. Their colleague George de Hevesy hid their medals in a bottle in a lab at the Niels Bohr Institute and dissolved them in aqua regia, a concentrated nitrogen hydrochloric acid (‘kungsvatten’ in Swedish). After the war, the gold solution was still there, and then it was transformed back into solid gold and recast to medals by the Nobel authorities in Stockholm. Finally, the scientists received their Nobel medals back.

… That’s what I learned in school!

Refs.:

1: 04:33 – Four new elements discovered

2: Discovery and Assignment of Elements with Atomic Numbers 113, 115, 117 and 118

3: Aqua regia

+: What did you learn in school today ?