Rational Thinker
Rational Thinker
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How Helium Was Discovered
Helium is a very common element in our universe. However, due to its characteristics, it's very rarely found on Earth. This video shows how scientists in the 19th century overcame this obstacle, over…
How Relativity Was Validated
For over two centuries, Newton’s law of gravity accurately predicted the motions of all the planets in the solar system. But that all changed in 1859, when French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier…
How Absolute Zero Was Discovered
Absolute zero is the theoretical limit to how cold temperature can reach. The quest to calculate the value of it started in the 1700s, but wasn't accurately done so until the mid 1800s by British…
How the First Artificial Element Was Created
Technetium is quite an interesting element and has just as interesting of a history. Many had tried to discover it and failed, and this is because of how unstable all of its isotopes are. The only…
How Electricity Was Discovered
In 600 BC, Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus noticed that the gemstone amber attracted light objects when it was rubbed against a cloth. Unbeknownst to him, he had discovered the phenomenon of…
How the Neutrino Was Discovered
After the discovery of beta radiation by Ernest Rutherford in 1898 and the formulation of the mass-equivalency relation by Einstein in 1905, scientists realized that beta radiation was behaving in an…
How Superconductivity Was Discovered
The first liquefaction of helium in 1908 by Dutch experimental physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes was revolutionary. For the first time, scientists could push the boundaries of extremely low…
How X-rays Were Discovered
In the late 19th century, cathode rays were the dominant topic of discussion in the world of physics. Scientists all over the globe were debating over what the nature of those rays were and what that…
How Oxygen Was Discovered
In the 1770s, a revolution in chemistry had just begun, starting in Uppsala, Sweden. A young apothecary named Carl Wilhelm Scheele began a series of experiments that led to the eventual downfall of…
How Electron Spin Was Discovered
In 1887, physicists Albert Michelson and Edward Morley discovered a new phenomenon that would come to be known as the fine structure of spectral lines. These spectral lines split into two or more…
How Atoms Were Weighed for the First Time
The weights of atoms and molecules are quite precise today, but has quite a long and complicated history. This video dives into the very beginning of that history, right when modern atomic theory was…
The Origin of the Gravitational Constant
The gravitational constant, or at least what it represents, is a fundamental part of our universe. It represents the strength of gravity and, to our knowledge, remains unchanged throughout space and…
The Quantum Debate That Changed Physics Forever
The 1920s were an era of intense discovery and progress in the world of physics. Concepts such as matrix mechanics, the Schrödinger model of the atom, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and more…
How the Atom Was Split for the First Time
Ever since the discovery of the proton in 1919 by Ernest Rutherford, scientists had been on a mission to break atoms apart, splitting them into their smaller components in hopes of changing elements…
How Radio Waves Were Discovered
In the 1780s, an Italian physicist named Luigi Galvani made a shocking discovering when experimenting with the remains of frogs. He found that when he touched a the nerves of a frog with a lancet,…
How Radioactivity Was Discovered
In 1895, German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered a new type of radiation. It was invisible and penetrating to some materials, but not others. He called the radiation "X-rays," and the…
How The Atomic Number Was Discovered
Henry Moseley was a British physicist known for his discovery of Moseley's Law, which relates the atomic number to the "characteristic X-ray" of each element. Before Moseley's discovery, the atomic…
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Rational Thinker has published 17 episodes since May 2026, covering topics in Earth Sciences, History.
Rational Thinker is currently highly active with new episodes hourly. Average episode length is 15m.
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