Monday 29 March 2021
Liquid Gold
John Walker, English chemist who in 1826 discovered first “friction match”. He combined mixture of sulfur and other materials that were coated on the wooden stick, and rugged paper that was coated with phosphorus. By running the match between folded paper, sulfur would ignite and set the stick on fire. He managed to sell numerous matches of this design during the next few years, but it became apparent that his chemical formula was not suited for widespread use
Janos Irinyi (1817-1895) was a Hungarian chemist and inventor of the noiseless and non-explosive match. He achieved this by mixing the phosphorus with lead dioxide instead of the potassium chlorate used previously.
Sunday 28 March 2021
Zaysan
Lake Zaysan is about 40 million years older and is believed to have formed sometime during the Cretaceous period (145 – 66 million years ago). Lake Zaysan’s old age is widely accepted but determining the lake’s exact age has been difficult – it may be even older than 65 million years.
Lake Zaysan is located in Kazakhstan near several artificial reservoirs and the Bukhtarma dam. The construction of the dam caused Lake Zaysan to rise above its natural level by about 6 m (20 ft). This increased Lake Zaysan’s total area and in some sources the lake is listed as part of the artificial reservoirs.
Snapshot