Rational Thinker

How The Electric Force Was First Measured

By the 1750s, we had a pretty decent understanding of electricity. However, the theory was incomplete. This was demonstrated most precisely when Benjamin Franklin put a c

How Quarks Were Discovered

Man, this video took me a while to make. It just may be my most ambitious project yet. Hopefully I didn't miss anything too important. If I did or made a mistake, feel fr

How the Solar System Was First Measured

Johannes Kepler had the relative sizes of the orbits of our planets in the solar system mapped by the 1630s. The shape of the solar system had been known relatively well,

How The Periodic Table Was Created

In 1875, French chemist Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran discovered the element 'Gallium' after isolating it from a zinc blende ore. However, shortly after his publication

How a Chemist Accidentally Destroyed a Scientific Myth

Before the modern days of organic and inorganic chemistry, there was an old theory called "Vitalism" that had made its way into chemistry. Pioneered into the field by the

How The Double Helix Was Discovered

You might think DNA was always the frontrunner by biologists to be the master blueprint of life. However, that couldn't be further from the truth. This video documents ho

How Helium Was Discovered

Helium is a very common element in our universe. However, due to its characteristics, it's very rarely found on Earth. This video shows how scientists in the 19th century

How Relativity Was Validated

For over two centuries, Newton’s law of gravity accurately predicted the motions of all the planets in the solar system. But that all changed in 1859, when French astrono

How The Atomic Number Was Discovered

Henry Moseley was a British physicist known for his discovery of Moseley's Law, which relates the atomic number to the "characteristic X-ray" of each element. Before Mose

How Radio Waves Were Discovered

In the 1780s, an Italian physicist named Luigi Galvani made a shocking discovering when experimenting with the remains of frogs. He found that when he touched a the nerve

How the First Artificial Element Was Created

Technetium is quite an interesting element and has just as interesting of a history. Many had tried to discover it and failed, and this is because of how unstable all of

How Electron Spin Was Discovered

In 1887, physicists Albert Michelson and Edward Morley discovered a new phenomenon that would come to be known as the fine structure of spectral lines. These spectral lin

How the Atom Was Split for the First Time

Ever since the discovery of the proton in 1919 by Ernest Rutherford, scientists had been on a mission to break atoms apart, splitting them into their smaller components i

How Oxygen Was Discovered

In the 1770s, a revolution in chemistry had just begun, starting in Uppsala, Sweden. A young apothecary named Carl Wilhelm Scheele began a series of experiments that led

How Absolute Zero Was Discovered

Absolute zero is the theoretical limit to how cold temperature can reach. The quest to calculate the value of it started in the 1700s, but wasn't accurately done so until

How Superconductivity Was Discovered

The first liquefaction of helium in 1908 by Dutch experimental physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes was revolutionary. For the first time, scientists could push the boundarie

The Quantum Debate That Changed Physics Forever

The 1920s were an era of intense discovery and progress in the world of physics. Concepts such as matrix mechanics, the Schrödinger model of the atom, the Heisenberg unce

How X-rays Were Discovered

In the late 19th century, cathode rays were the dominant topic of discussion in the world of physics. Scientists all over the globe were debating over what the nature of

How Radioactivity Was Discovered

In 1895, German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered a new type of radiation. It was invisible and penetrating to some materials, but not others. He called the rad

The Origin of the Gravitational Constant

The gravitational constant, or at least what it represents, is a fundamental part of our universe. It represents the strength of gravity and, to our knowledge, remains un