The Lighter Side of History of Science

Chapter 1: Astronomy. Astronomy is the oldest science. For example, Stonehenge has many astronomical alignments, But nobody agrees on its purpose, or who built it. One theory by Fred Hoyle says that the time it takes to move a stone three Aubrey holes yearly equals the period of the intercepts of the Sun's and the Moon's paths in the sky. In another theory, moving a stone by two Aubrey holes per day represents the moon's orbit around the Earth. I'm like Halley's Comet, and the ancient Chinese were like Astronomers and stuff. Sometimes when they saw a light in the sky that wasn't supposed to be there like comets and stuff, they called us, like "Guest Stars", man, and that's cool. We're astronomers too! Well, all of us except for the inventor Archimedes. Aristotle, that's not very nice. I built a planetarium, and I think that counts. Right Pythagoras? Archimedes is right, Aristotle. In fact, I was a mathematician, but I did develop the misconception that the planets were attached to crystalline spheres. How can you use math for astronomy? My belief has always been that math is too perfect for astronomy. Hey Pythagoras, what ever happened to you crystalline sphere theory? Well, it was disproved later in a more western part of Europe. How could those western guys use astronomy? Those western guys used astronomy for navigation at sea. According to the stars, in a few more weeks we'll reach land and... Chapter 2: Biology & Genetics. My name is Cornelius, and I'm here to tell you about Darwin. In Darwin's book, The Origin of Species, he proposed that humans and monkeys shared a common ancestor. This was widely rejected at the time as it was very insulting to my species. Gregor Mendel's work with breeding pea plants was also quite revolutionary. The narrator will tell you more. Before Mendel, one theory of genetics was the Blending Theory, in which traits from each parent are blended in the offspring. Another theory, Pangenesis, said that said that hereditary traits were caused by events during its lifetime. Mendel, however, found that for traits which only one of the two parents had, some had a 1 in 4 chance of appearing in the offspring. These were recessive traits. Other traits had a 3 in 4 chance of appearing. These were dominant traits. Later, after much research, James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the genetic material in 1953. Chapter 3: Physics I just discovered gravity! My three laws of motion! An object in motion will stay in motion until... Force equals mass times acceleration. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I just invented the internet. D'oh! Not compatible! The original model of the atom, proposed by Dalton, was a small sphere. J. J. Thompson later discovered electrons, which he said were mixed in the middle of the atom in what he called the "Plum Pudding" model. Rutherford discovered protons, and proposed that they were the nucleus of the atom, while the electrons were on the outside. In 1932, James Chadwick discovered the neutron inside the nucleus of the atom. Later, Niels Bohr and others proposed the Quantum Mechanical model for the location of the electron, a complicated theory which involves the electrons being randomly located within a certain area. Einstein, however, disagreed with the quantum mechanical model, saying that "God does not play dice." Well, that's it. For chapters 4-6, be sure to check History of Science part 2, which will be available as soon as we get back our funding, I promise. Now, uh, Cornelius? What...