Lecture 5: The Chemical Revolution and the Nature of Matter

What is the nature of matter, and how did we come to understand the chemical elements and atomic structure? This lecture is a brief and selective overview of the history of our understanding of the nature of matter and chemistry. We will also introduce spectroscopy and radioactivity, two very powerful tools that came out of the chemical revolution that are crucial for the inquiry in this class into the question of life on other worlds. Recorded live on 2009 Sep 29 in Room 1005 Smith Laboratory on the Columbus campus of The Ohio State University.