Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Task #17 Bunsen Statue

"Hold up a paper that has this man's name on it, as you stand next to his statue. Without his scientific burner invention, we never would have gotten through our junior year class in high school with the teacher that wore heavy blue eye makeup."

Kinda hard to believe that the Bunsen Burner is still used today, but contrary to popular belief, Robert Wilhelm Bunsen did *not* create the burner, itself...he merely improved the design, which has immortalized him in generations of high school chemistry classes as the burner guy, rather than someone who made more significant contributions to the areas of organic chemistry (based on the number of people who I know that failed out of organic chem, they'd probably rather forget him), spectroscopy, geology, gas measurements and analysis, the galvanic battery, and arsenic compounds.

Poor guy. That's like, preparing a Thanksgiving Day meal for 4,000 and being complimented on your gravy spoon holder.

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