Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2019 January 15

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January 15

Science Nobel prizes.

So my question is on Nobel prizes to scientists that were not doing it of a university. Are there any Nobel prizes, that when 1st discovered, was by a corporation and therefore proprietary company secret, and then some years later, as their competitor companies started discovering it, then the 1st company decided to publish their recipes and later won a Nobel for it?

To give you an idea how proprietary companies are, just take a look at the paint industry in the U.S. We got large paint companies like Sherwin-Williams and PPG - no 2 paint companies make the same paint (except by coincidence). There was a 3rd company Valspar that died out, and 1 of the other 2 bought all that company's secret ingredients, and made it so they can only sell once.

Did anyone win a Nobel for rechargeable batteries? (Like for laptop and cell phone batteries.). Like 10 years ago, you had to recharge a battery when it was very empty to full, otherwise it would shorten the battery. Now, you can recharge a battery at 40% without hurting it as much. I think that was not any 1 company that discovered it, but a bunch around the same time.

Also 10+ years ago, the oil industry: the process of petroleum converted into gasoline, was done at around 35% efficiency. But today, it's done at almost 99% efficiency. Thankfully, it was not discovered by any private company, else they would have monopolized, so it was discovered by scientists for universities, so now all gasoline companies can do the same efficient process. But it doesn't seem anyone won a Nobel for that either. I wonder how much stuff in science is lacking due to some great discovery by a private company that made it proprietary so it'll be some years before someone else discovers it. 67.175.224.138 (talk) 04:09, 15 January 2019 (UTC).

The difference is what some history of science people call the difference between techne and episteme. If you want a good overview, check out the first episode of the recent Crash Course series by Hank Green on the History of Science. See here. Green uses terms like "techne" and "episteme", Greek words for what we might term "applied science" and "pure science" or "technology" and "research" because he wants to avoid the pejoritive distinctions we make between them. The basic idea is that science can be thought of as having two ends: to make more useful things (the techne) and to increase human knowledge (the episteme)). Almost always, the Nobel prizes in sciences like Chemistry and Physics tends to be awarded for advances in episteme science: science that advances knowledge, as opposed to science that lets us make things. Which is not to say that the one is more important than the other. Its just that techne science is not what those prizes are designed to award for. All of your examples are great, important scientific discoveries, but they are from the techne branch of science, which is usually outside of the scope of what the Nobel prizes are awarded for. --Jayron32 14:03, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

One example that comes to mind is Shuji Nakamura, the inventor of the blue LED. He was an engineer at a Japanese company at the time, not a university researcher. ~Anachronist (talk) 04:51, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Somewhat in between but there are also ones who worked for things like Bell Labs. Our article claims 9 prizes. You may find some of them listed here [1] but note that the affiliation is at the time of the announcement which tends to be long after the work which earned the prize hence why Shuji Nakamura is listed under University of California, Santa Barbara. Nil Einne (talk) 09:19, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

The Nobel science prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology and medicine are not rewards for patents, for commercialization or even leadership in these fields, and the award declarations do not contain recipes or design information that could constitute proprietary company secrets. According to Alfred Nobel's Will (seen here) that is interpreted by selection committees, the prizes go to persons whose work "during the preceding year" conferred the "greatest benefit on mankind". The committee interpretations have been controversial, tending to reward discoveries over inventions, sometimes overlooking significant team members (no more than 3 can share an award), sometimes awarding long after the relevant work e.g. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar shared the 1983 Physics Prize for his 1930s work on stellar structure and evolution (no posthumous prize is allowed), and a negative Nobel Prize effect has been observed about some prizewinners. Wikipedia has lists of Nobel laureates by country, university affiliation and secondary school affiliation. DroneB (talk) 13:57, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Train bells

When are trains required to ring their bells? 2601:646:8A00:A0B3:0:0:0:ECBD (talk) 05:39, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Depends on which railroad (what country's rules to follow). See for example General Code of Operating Rules and Northeast Operating Rules Advisory Committee for various parts of North America. DMacks (talk) 11:21, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

King George V, still carrying the bell fitted for the US tour

Weymouth Harbour Tramway

• Generally slowly and for fairly long periods, as an indication "there is a train here". For more immediate signalling, they have whistles or air horns as well. These are louder, so can be heard from further away, and are more 'attention grabbing'. The use of bells is not universal (even 'common' would be doubtful) for railways internationally. They are common in the USA and the Mid-West, where railway lines were not enclosed by clear fences and level crossings are common. The rules have already been linked, and lines did vary, but generally they'd ring their bells when approaching the areas (crossings and unenclosed station yards) where the trains would be moving amongst traffic and the public.

In countries like the UK, railways have mostly been enclosed within their own fences and the public (including farm animals and road traffic) are kept away. Crossings are mostly made by bridges instead. If there is a level crossing in the UK, this would have had a crossing keeper staffing the crossing (automated today) and gates would be closed before the train. There are only a couple of UK locos with bells, fitted (along with headlights) after notable tours of the USA. Some of them were also the (rare) 'Toby the Tram Engine' types, which worked in the flat country of East Anglia, where crossings were common and bridges rare.

In Europe, main line trains were also segregated, although there were many examples of narrow gauge tramways (especially France and the Low Countries). These ran down a verge at the side of the road and often used tram engines, with enclosed running gear and bells. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:54, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

British trains use a two-tone hooter. Alansplodge (talk) 13:57, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

• Same as most countries, British trains use a bell, where a bell is needed. If there is on-street running (i.e. a 'tramway') then British trains use bells. The whistles, horns or any hooters are used differently, for immediate signalling, not as a presence indicator. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:28, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Claims of being the best

Paul Erdős: "Erdős published around 1,500 mathematical papers during his lifetime, a figure that remains unsurpassed." (quote taken from the respective article)

Leonhard Euler: "He is also widely considered to be the most prolific mathematician of all time. His collected works fill 60 to 80 quarto volumes, more than anybody in the field."

Two claims are contradictory to each other since there can only be one most. So who actually published the most? And if there is no way to compare, both statements should be deleted in each respective article. 14.169.111.184 (talk) 08:23, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Presumably the difference is in total published work (books etc) vs published papers. There wouldn't really have been the culture of publishing papers in scientific journals in back in the days when Euler worked. 131.251.254.154 (talk) 08:56, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Yes, the two claims are not directly comparable - the first is a statement of numbers (of a particular type of publication), the second is one of volume (publication type unspecified). More detail would be required for comparison. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 09:14, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Exactly as explained above. If person 1 writes 200 one-page papers, but person 2 has written 100 three-page papers, then the first person is more prolific in terms of number of papers written but person 2 is more prolific in terms of amount of text written. Both statements regarding Erdős and Euler are simultaneously correct, and do not contradict each other in any way. --Jayron32 13:43, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

• There's also two centuries between them. The format of scientific publishing had changed greatly in that period. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:10, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Leinniz was before then even, and the project to publish all his work which started more than a hundred years ago is still ongoing. And Gauss is commonly counted as the greatest mathematician ever, have a look at List of things named after Carl Friedrich Gauss to get an idea of the extent of his influence. Dmcq (talk) 14:21, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Comparing scientists on their sum of "intellectual property" (written papers, drawings, concepts) makes no sense. They all stand on their very own unique base. What to compare between Ferdinand Porsche, Nikola Tesla, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein or Srinivasa Ramanujan? They where all unique and awesome. --Kharon (talk) 23:28, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

It's interesting trivia. For a short time in the early 1990s I studied under Arnold L. Rheingold, who was at one point the most published chemist in history, though that may have been surpassed. It was a quirk of the field he worked in (X-ray crystallography), as an early crystallographer, he got a paper every time he worked out the structure of a molecule via X-ray crystallography, and he could crank those things out like once a week. No one gets papers published for that anymore, largely because of guys like Rheingold, who made it routine to get a crystallograph. It's true that volume of papers or number of pages of published text are not particularly good indicators of importance to one's field (however that would be quantified anyways), but Rheingold is not a particularly well-known chemist aside from that bit of trivia. --Jayron32 15:23, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Latex balloon additives

Rubber party balloons are often advertised as "100% latex", and thus safe for the environment. Yet they include pigments, and plasticisers, and possibly other additives. What are those chemicals, and what is their impact on the environment? Please give citations, as I want to add the answers to relevant articles.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Pigsonthewing (talk • contribs)

This article is quite detailed on the manufacturing process, though it glosses over a few things things that are highly variable, like specific pigments used in coloring the balloons. It may be hard, if not impossible, to list every possible pigment that has ever been used in a latex balloon, but other than that, it goes into just about every other ingredient, chemical, and process in making balloons. It's a good start for your research. This article lists the chemical make-up of many pigments used specifically in making balloons, but I don't think it's exhaustive. I hope those two articles help your research. --Jayron32 13:36, 15 January 2019 (UTC)