You may have seen from my previous post that there was a SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN event in New York this past week. I had the opportunity to attend this event and it was really quite fun. The talk given by the editor-in-chief, Mariette DiChristina, gave an insiders look to the recent SCI AM special issue called Origins. Origins of what? Well, pretty much anything you can think of from paper clips to life on earth.
To be quite honest, I really didn’t know what to expect from this talk. I had never seen an editor-in-chief talk about science, let alone discuss scientific articles designed to be enjoyable to both a scientific audience and the general public. What I got from the talk was a combination of interesting facets of scientific history presented in a succinct, enjoyable format. Some fun facts include:
• The origins of scotch tape date back to 1930, with the development of cellophane. Scotch tape actually contains four individual layers. There is adhesive layer and a clear cellophane layer. However, there is also a layer of primer that helps the adhesive stick to the cellophane and an additional “release agent” which allows one to unravel the tape from the role. Scotch tape also is also triboluminescent and releases X-rays when unraveled quickly in a vacuum.
• Chocolate dates back to 3,100 years ago. However, the addition of milk to chocolate, effectively creating milk chocolate is accredited to an Irish physician and naturalist named Hans Slone in the 1680s.
• The origin of cooking our food dates back to 1.9 million years ago. Harvard anthropologist, Richard Wrangham, believes that cooking is an essential development in formation of characteristics we consider to be distinctly human. After all, evidence suggests that Homo erectus, hominids with larger brains and smaller pelvises than their predecessors, appeared around the same time as the advent of fire. Anthropologists believe that cooking allowed for less chewing time, leaving more time and energy for social relationships, thus, stimulating brain growth. Now that’s food for thought.
For more scintillating stories of origins, I encourage you to check out this free podcast interview with Mariette DiChristina and, of course, check out the Origins issue.
Yay, Hans Sloane, one of my personal heroes. He was also the person whose collections formed the basis of the British Museum and the Natural History Museum in London. There’s a Tube Station and a Square named after him. He even features in my Scientific Pub Crawl of London. He lived to the ripe old age of 92, which I’m non-scientifically correlating to the benefits of eating chocolate.
I don’t know so very much about the man but was astonished on visiting my brother in Killyleagh, Co. Down in Northern Ireland to come across this statue
Apparently Sloane was born in the town in 1660…
If you ever want to organise a pub crawl to Killyleagh, just let me know!
Someone once told me that “milk chocolate” was invented during WWI as a mechanism to help stretch chocolate and sugar rations. This never really made sense to me because I always wondered why they would use milk (a highly nutritious staple) to produce a totally unnecessary food product during such tough times. I suppose I could have looked it up but this turned out to be far easier! Its probably why Cadbury is the best!
Matt and Stephen- Sloane was born in 1660 and lived until 92 (died in 1753). He added mild to chocolate in the 1680s, when he was in his 20s. So, he had a good 70 years or so to get the health benefits of chocolate. I agree with you Matt that it can’t be proven that the chocolate contributed to his long life, but it probably made him a much happier man!
Jeanne- Interesting story. Now you are the chocolate myth buster! Who says reading blogs doesn’t contribute to your education?
Caryn:
Sorry to be a scientist, but surely it should be 1.9 million years ago that we all started cooking??
John- You are correct, thank you. That was a typo. I’ll adjust it now. I am impressed with your observational skills!