NIEHS Kids Page Lets Go to a Party Brainteasers and Riddles

Can you guess what each of these famous scientists did by reading their responses to a party invitation? And notice how many times their names were used to name their discoveries! And after you play the game, visit our song pages for the "Mother Necessity" song about famous inventors.

Things you didn't know...before now!
(Or maybe you did!)

Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell was born in 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland, but eventually settled in Boston, Massachusetts, before beginning his career as an inventor. Throughout his life Bell was interested in the education of deaf people, which first led to his invention of the microphone and later, in 1876, to his efforts in patenting the "electrical speech machine," which we now call a telephone. News of his invention quickly spread throughout the United States and Europe, and by 1878 Bell had set up the first telephone exchange in New Haven, Connecticut. By 1884, long distance connections were made between Boston, Massachusetts and New York City. Bell's patent of the "electrical speech machine" paved the way for the Information Superhighway.

The Curie's
Pierre and Marie Curie are best known for their pioneering work in the study of RADIOACTIVITY, which led to their discovery in 1898 of the elements RADIUM and POLONIUM. Marie Curie spent many years as a governess and teacher before studying mathematics and physics at the Sorbonne in Paris, earning degrees in both subjects in 1893 and 1894.

Albert Einstein
The German-American physicist Albert Einstein contributed more than any other scientist to the 20th-century vision of physical reality. In the wake of World War I, Einstein's theories -- especially his theory of RELATIVITY -- seemed to many people to point to a "pure quality of human thought," one far removed from the war and its aftermath. (Source: Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc., 1995)

Werner Karl Heisenberg
German theoretical physicist Werner Karl Heisenberg was one of the leading scientists of the 20th century. He did important work in nuclear and particle physics, but his most significant contribution was the development of QUANTUM MECHANICS. He is best known for his UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE, which restricts the accuracy with which some properties of atoms and particles -- such as position and linear momentum -- can be determined simultaneously. (Source: Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc., 1995)

Volta
The Italian physicist Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta, was the inventor of the voltaic pile, the first electric battery. In 1775 he invented the electrophorus, a device that, once electrically charged by having been rubbed, could transfer charge to other objects. Between 1776 and 1778, Volta discovered and isolated methane gas. When Luigi Galvani's experiments with "animal electricity" were published in 1791, Volta began experiments that led him to theorize that animal tissue was not necessary for conduction of electricity. Proof of this theory was the battery, which Volta invented in 1800. Volta taught at Como Gymnasium (1775-78) and at Pavia University (1778-1815). Napoleon made him a count in 1801. The unit of electric potential, the volt, is named in his honor. (Source: Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc., 1995)

Archimedes
In theoretical mechanics, Archimedes is responsible for fundamental theorems concerning the centers of gravity of plane figures and solids, and he is famous for his theorem on the weight of a body immersed in a liquid, called ARCHIMEDES' PRINCIPLE. A famous story, unfortunately with no foundation, relates that having discovered this while in the bath, he ran naked through the streets crying, "Eureka," or "I have found it." Archimedes' treatises are remarkable for their original ideas, rigorous demonstrations, and excellent computational technique. (Source: Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc., 1995)

Andre Ampere
Andre Ampere was a French physicist who laid the foundations for the science of electrodynamics through his demonstration that electric currents produce magnetic fields. "Current" is like water flowing in a river. Current is expressed in units called Amps, which were named for Andre Ampere. An Amp equals 6.28x1018 electrons per second. and through his subsequent investigation into the relationship between these two phenomena. Ampere's most notable achievements were his independent determination of Avogadro's law and his work from 1820 to 1827 based on OERSTED'S discovery that a magnetic needle moves in the vicinity of an electric current. Ampere succeeded in explaining the latter phenomenon by assuming that an electric current is capable of exciting a magnetic field. He further demonstrated that the direction of the magnetic field is determined by the direction of the current. Ampere may be best known for producing a definition of the unit of measurement of current flow, now known as the AMPERE. (Source: Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc., 1995)

Robert Boyle
The English natural philosopher and chemist Robert Boyle made important contributions to experimental chemistry and is known for his ideal GAS LAW, subsequently termed Boyle's Law. Boyle became interested in medicine and the new science of Galileo and studied chemistry. Boyle's earliest publication was on the physical properties of air, from which he derived his law that the volume of a given amount of a gas varies inversely with pressure. Boyle was a skillful experimenter who insisted that experimentation was an essential part of scientific proof, an approach that influenced Sir Isaac NEWTON and the methodology of many later scientists. (Source: Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc., 1995)

Georg Simon Ohm
The German physicist Georg Simon Ohm, for whom the unit of electrical resistance, the ohm, was named, determined (1826) Ohm's law -- the relationship between the flow of current, the voltage, and the resistance in a closed circuit (see ELECTRICITY). Ohm's scientific contemporaries were slow to recognize his achievement, failing to realize how closely his conclusions were derived from careful experimental work and especially how his discovery ordered vast quantities of existing experimental data. For most of his life Ohm held only poorly paid teaching jobs, but in 1852 he was given the chair of physics at the University of Munich based on his scientific accomplishments. (Source: Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc., 1995)

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Let's Go to a Party Puzzles!

Things you didn't know...before now! (Or maybe you did!)

Let's Go to a Party
Puzzles!

Things you didn't know...before now!
(Or maybe you did!)