- What later discovery did Kamerlingh Onnes make using the same cryogenic apparatus that liquefied helium?
Toxicology
The study of poisons and their effects on organisms.
- What was Richet actually trying to measure when he discovered anaphylaxis?
- What causes engine knocking, and why did it limit the power of early internal combustion engines?
- How did Thomas Midgley Jr. discover that tetraethyllead eliminated engine knock?
- What long-term health effects resulted from decades of leaded petrol use in the general population?
- How does Thomas Midgley's later invention of chlorofluorocarbons connect to his legacy of environmental harm?
- What properties was Paul Müller looking for in the ideal insecticide before he tested DDT?
- Why was DDT's tendency to persist on surfaces for months so useful for malaria-control programmes?
- How did DDT spraying campaigns change malaria rates in Southern Europe, Africa, and South Asia after World War II?
- What ecological harm did the same persistence that made DDT effective end up causing, as documented in Silent Spring?
- What properties made DDT seem like an ideal insecticide when Müller discovered it in 1939?
- How was DDT used in wartime and postwar public health campaigns before its risks were understood?
- What specific property of DDT eventually turned it from an asset into a liability?
- How did Rachel Carson's later work change the scientific consensus on DDT?
- Which real cases were the first to use DNA fingerprinting, and what did they resolve?
- How quickly did DNA fingerprinting move from an accidental lab observation to routine use in criminal trials?
- What did the seven tobacco company executives testify to Congress in 1994, and how did that conflict with their own companies' internal research?
- How quickly was genetic fingerprinting first used to solve a criminal case?
- What organisms did Johanna van Bronswijk find living in the domestic mattress besides dust mites?
- At what impact energy do full versus empty beer bottles shatter, and why does an empty bottle survive longer?
- How does the threshold for breaking a beer bottle compare to the force needed to fracture a human skull?
- Why did researchers undertake this study using a drop tower and standard beer bottles?
- How long does a partner's DNA remain detectable in saliva after a kiss?
- Why couldn't Meldal's copper-based click reaction be used inside living cells?
- How does intoxicated C. elegans movement differ measurably from that of sober worms?