Nikola tesla the genius who lit the world

Nikola Tesla symbolizes a unifying force and inspiration for all nations in the name of peace and science.

Tesla studied at the Realschule, Karlstadt in 1873, the Polytechnic Institute in Graz, Austria and the University of Prague. At first, he intended to specialize in physics and mathematics, but soon he became fascinated with electricity. He began his career as an electrical engineer with a telephone company in Budapest in 1881. It was there, as Tesla was walking with a friend through the city park that the elusive solution to the rotating magnetic field flashed through his mind. With a stick, he drew a diagram in the sand explaining to his friend the principle of the induction motor. Before going to America, Tesla joined Continental Edison Company in Paris where he designed dynamos. While in Strassbourg in 1883, he privately built a prototype of the induction motor and ran it successfully. Unable to interest anyone in Europe in promoting this radical device, Tesla accepted an offer to work for Thomas Edison in New York. His childhood dream was to come to America to harness the power of Niagara Falls.

Young Nikola Tesla came to the United States in 1884 with an introduction letter from Charles Batchelor to Thomas Edison: “I know two great men,” wrote Batchelor, “one is you and the other is this young man.” Tesla spent the next 59 years of his productive life living in New York. Tesla set about improving Edison’s line of dynamos while working in Edison’s lab in New Jersey.  It was here that his divergence of opinion with Edison over direct current versus alternating current began. This disagreement climaxed in the war of the currents as Edison fought a losing battle to protect his investment in direct current equipment and facilities.

  Tesla pointed out the inefficiency of Edison’s direct current electrical powerhouses  that have been build up and down the Atlantic seaboard. The secret, he felt, lay in the use of alternating current, because to him all energies were cyclic. Why not build generators that would send  electrical energy along distribution lines  first one way, than another, in multiple waves using the polyphase principle?

UNIT 6

Primordial soup

Go back far enough in time, and you eventually have to explain how the chemicals of life − especially proteins and nucleic acids − formed in Earth's primordial environment.

In 1929, biochemists John Haldane and Aleksander Oparin hypothesized independently that Earth's early atmosphere lacked free oxygen. In this harsh environment, they suggested, organic compounds could form from simple molecules if they were stimulated by a strong source of energy, either ultraviolet radiation or lightning. Haldane added that the oceans would have been a "primitive soup" of these organic compounds.

U.S. chemists Harold C. Urey and Stanley Miller set out to test the Oparin-Haldane hypothesis in 1953. They reproduced the early atmosphere of Earth by creating a carefully controlled, closed system. The ocean was a warmed flask of water. As water vapor rose from the water and collected in another chamber, Urey and Miller introduced hydrogen, methane and ammonia to simulate the oxygen-free atmosphere. Then they discharged sparks, representing lightning, into the mixture of gases. Finally, a condenser cooled the gases into a liquid they collected for analysis.

After a week, Urey and Miller had astonishing results: organic compounds were abundant in the cooled liquid. Most notably, Miller found several amino acids, including glycine, alanine and glutamic acid. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, which themselves are the key ingredients of both cellular structures and cellular enzymes responsible for important chemical reactions. Urey and Miller concluded that organic molecules could form in an oxygen-free atmosphere and that the simplest of living things might not be far behind.