The 11 Most Important Scientific Experiments in History
Kites, gold foil, X-ray film and one contaminated dish nobody meant to leave out.
1Franklin's Kite Experiment
In June 1752 Franklin drew electrical charge from a storm cloud and proved lightning was electricity.
2Rutherford's Gold Foil Experiment
Alpha particles bouncing off gold foil in 1909 revealed the atomic nucleus.
3The Michelson-Morley Experiment
Its failure to find the ether in 1887 cleared the road to special relativity.
4Galileo's Inclined Plane
Rolling balls down a ramp gave the first quantitative law of falling bodies.
5Pasteur's Swan-Neck Flasks
Sterile broth that stayed sterile ended the idea of spontaneous generation.
6Fleming's Penicillin Dish
A contaminated culture plate in 1928 became the first antibiotic.
7Photo 51
Rosalind Franklin's X-ray diffraction image gave away the double helix of DNA.
8Cavendish's Torsion Balance
Weighed the Earth in 1798 by measuring the gravitational pull between lead spheres.
9The Meselson-Stahl Experiment
Showed in 1958 how DNA copies itself, one old strand per new molecule.
10Eddington's Eclipse Observation
The 1919 eclipse showed starlight bending around the Sun, confirming general relativity.
11Newton's Prism Experiment
Split white light into a spectrum and recombined it, founding modern optics.
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