Conversational topic: Inventors and their inventions

People all over the world are proud of scientists and inventors who made all-round progress in our life. The inventors have achieved great successes in the development of physics, especially atomic physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, etc. Among famous inventors we can name such scientists as Alfred Nobel, Alexander Graham Bell, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Michael Faradey and many others.

Alfred Nobel, the Swedish chemical experimenter and businessman who invented dynamite and other explosive compounds, was a person of many paradoxes and contradictions. He wrote a considerable number of plays, novels and poems, only one of which was published. He turned to a career in chemistry.

Nobel had an excellent scientific mind and loved to tackle problems in his chemical laboratories. By 1859 he had begun the experiment with one of his explosives (nitroglycerin). His new explosive was named «dynamite» and patented in 1867. Although he was often called Lord of Dynamite Nobel was strongly opposed to the military uses of his inventions. His new explosive found such spectacular uses as in the construction of tunnels, canals, railroads and roads. Dynamite was also a factor in oil drilling in the Baku fields.

When Alfred Nobel died he left the major portion of his fortune which brought him lasting fame for the establishment of annual awards. There are six classifications to reward people who have made outstanding contributions for the benefit of mankind in physiology or medicine, physics, literature, chemistry, peace and economics. The awards are usually presented in Stockholm at a sumptuous ceremony with the King of Sweden as the host on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death. Each prize includes a gold medal, a diploma and a gift of money.

Isaac Newton is a well-known English scientist and inventor. He was a student of Cambridge University where he made his first researches. Telescopes had been known by people before Newton, but they were not satisfactory. They based on glass lenses which produced false colour. Newton made a telescope based on curved mirror, so that it became known as a reflector. Some years later he became a member of the Royal Society of Britain. He got acquainted with the famous people of that time Christopher Wren and Edmund Halley. These scientists were not good mathematicians and they asked Newton to help them to make a new star catalogue for sailors. So, in some days the catalogue was published because Newton had already made it.

More than that Isaac Newton was a great physicist. He discovered the law of gravitation. It happened when he sat in the garden and the apple fall down on him. At that moment he realized that the force pulling on the apple was the same as the force which keeps the Moon in its path round the Earth. Soon Newton wrote a book where he told people about the law he had discovered: «Every particle of matter in the Universe attracts every other particle with a force which becomes weaker with increasing distance».

Another famous scientist and inventor is Michael Faradey. He found that his main interest in science was electricity. He studied a lot and made many experiments. Faradey was wondering whether a magnet could in some way give electric current. He got a bright idea. He thought of moving the magnet near the wire and then got what he wanted – an electric current was produced in the wire. This was a great invention in the history of man’s experiments. But Faradey didn’t stop at this. He tried different ways of producing electric current even when he moved the wire near the magnet. This was the beginning of all machines that produce electricity today.

Albert Einstein is one of the greatest scientists of our age. The Theory of Relativity brought him fame on five continents. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, which seemed a flight of imagination to many at first, is now the cornerstone of modern physics. Many physical phenomena could never be explained without the Theory of Relativity. Einstein said that there were only twelve people living who understood his Theory of Relativity, although more than nine hundred books had been written trying to explain it. He himself explained relativity by this very simple illustration: «When you sit with a nice girl for an hour, you think it is only a minute; but when you sit on a hot stove for a minute, you think it is an hour. Well, well – so that’s relativity. It sounds all right to me; but if you don’t believe me and would like to try it out, I’ll be glad to sit with the girl if you’ll sit on the stove».