Word: acidic
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...early 19th century Belgium, Adolphe Sax was struck on the head by a brick. The accident-prone lad also swallowed a needle, fell down a flight of stairs, toppled onto a burning stove, and accidentally drank some sulfuric acid. When he grew up, he invented the saxophone...
Bada decided amino acids might help open those pages. Using standard lab equipment, he found that it was an easy matter to measure the ratio of left-handed to righthanded molecules in a common amino acid called isoleucine, and he was able to estimate the age of fossils from that ratio. What is more, his tests required only a tiny sampling of material and could be completed in a few hours. There is one serious hitch, he reports in Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Because the rate at which amino acids change their configuration varies significantly with heat, the temperature...
...check his theory, Bada dated a number of objects, including an ancient hominid bone dug up from East Africa's Olduvai Gorge by Anthropologist Louis S.B. Leakey. Its age, based on amino-acid dating, turned out to be 135,000 years-almost exactly the same as that deduced by Leakey from indirect geological evidence. Bada is still incredulous over the seemingly accurate results obtained by using his new clock. "It was so obvious and simple," he says, "I was just amazed that it hadn't been discovered before...
...years, the principal obstacle in the way of practical electric-powered highway vehicles has been the power supply. Familiar lead-acid storage batteries, while adequate as a supplemental source of electricity in conventional cars, suffer from what engineers call a "low energy density"; they need frequent recharging and deliver relatively little energy for their size and weight. Enough of them to power an electric car would weigh as much as an entire conventional automobile. Furthermore, there is little room for improvement; lead-acid batteries have already been developed close to their theoretical peak. Other batteries using different materials-nickel...
...breaks the chlorine hydrate apart into its separate components. The freed chlorine is released directly into the battery's electrolytic solution, where it helps sustain the electricity-producing chemical reactions. Because the chlorine remains dissolved, it is no more of a threat to driver or passengers than the acid in an ordinary battery...