• Question: Over the years, which one would you state to be one of the most influential and the most helpful to current scientific discoveries to this present day?

    Asked by KookieScience to Ed, Kerrianne, Nina, Oli, yoyehudi on 8 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Yo Yehudi

      Yo Yehudi answered on 8 Nov 2017:

      One of the most helpful scientific discoveries I can think of is undoubtedly antibiotics. Nowadays, if you get an injury that breaks your skin, while there is a chance of infection it probably wouldn’t be too bad – worst case is you see the doctor and they give you antibiotics, right? But in the past, if that same wound got infected you could end up losing the limb or even dying – something hard to imagine right now when we’re so used to easy good quality healthcare.
      On a related note, think of the fact that many bacteria are growing resistant to antibiotics over time. It would be really scary if they stopped working eventually! That’s why it’s so important to only take antibiotics if your doctor tells you to, and to finish the entire course of antibiotics rather than just stopping when you feel better.

    • Photo: Kerrianne Harrington

      Kerrianne Harrington answered on 9 Nov 2017:

      It’s really hard to pinpoint just one scientific discovery, because they tend to all follow up on each other.

      My pick is obviously going to be biased towards physics. I would pick Planck’s law of black body radiation, because it set off a whole chain of events that led to quantum theory. It must have been a really exciting time to have been a physicist!

    • Photo: Oli Wilson

      Oli Wilson answered on 9 Nov 2017:

      I think Yo’s answer is great – we only really started making and using antibiotics on a wide scale after WW2, which really isn’t very long ago, but their impact has been huge. They’ve been important across society, but they’ve probably also been helpful to science even if only for stopping people with great scientific minds from dying early!
      I reckon another incredibly influential invention is the microscope – without it there’d be a whole tiny world that we simply wouldn’t know exists! It’s been helpful for understanding how our own bodies work, how diseases spread, and for so much about the world!

Comments