The 11 Most Important Scientific Experiments in History

Kites, gold foil, X-ray film and one contaminated dish nobody meant to leave out.

1. 1
   Franklin's Kite Experiment

   In June 1752 Franklin drew electrical charge from a storm cloud and proved lightning was electricity.
2. 2
   Rutherford's Gold Foil Experiment

   Alpha particles bouncing off gold foil in 1909 revealed the atomic nucleus.
3. 3
   The Michelson-Morley Experiment

   Its failure to find the ether in 1887 cleared the road to special relativity.
4. 4
   Galileo's Inclined Plane

   Rolling balls down a ramp gave the first quantitative law of falling bodies.
5. 5
   Pasteur's Swan-Neck Flasks

   Sterile broth that stayed sterile ended the idea of spontaneous generation.
6. 6
   Fleming's Penicillin Dish

   A contaminated culture plate in 1928 became the first antibiotic.
7. 7
   Photo 51

   Rosalind Franklin's X-ray diffraction image gave away the double helix of DNA.
8. 8
   Cavendish's Torsion Balance

   Weighed the Earth in 1798 by measuring the gravitational pull between lead spheres.
9. 9
   The Meselson-Stahl Experiment

   Showed in 1958 how DNA copies itself, one old strand per new molecule.
10. 10
    Eddington's Eclipse Observation

    The 1919 eclipse showed starlight bending around the Sun, confirming general relativity.
11. 11
    Newton's Prism Experiment

    Split white light into a spectrum and recombined it, founding modern optics.

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