The structure of a molecule

The structure of a molecule
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The structure of the benzene ring supposedly came to Friedrich August Kekulé, a German chemist, in a dream, but several versions of that dream have been written about. The most well-known version – and the one Kekulé himself spoke about in a speech at benzene symposium in 1890 – was of a self-devouring snake. This, Kekulé said, led him to develop the ring shape for the molecule, and his illustrated structure demonstrated how atoms could be arranged with chemical bonds. Science has continued ground-breaking discoveries long after Kekulé. Here are some of the coolest scientific discoveries of recent times.

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Theory of Evolution

Theory of Evolution
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Charles Darwin may get all the glory when it comes to the theory of evolution, but scientist Alfred Russel Wallace thought of it, too. During an eight-year expedition to what is now Indonesia, Wallace collected and studied thousands of animal specimens. By 1855, Wallace concluded that living things evolve – but he didn’t figure out how until 1858 when a fever dream sparked the epiphany: Animals evolve by adapting to their environment. Much of what we as humans do can be explained by evolution – even though Darwin himself felt crying, despite being a purely human ability, was without purpose. Here’s what today’s scientists think about why humans cry.

Twilight

Twilight
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Yep, this teenage romance story came to author Stephenie Meyer in a dream. But the vampire story wasn’t your standard boy meets girl romance: “It was two people in kind of a little circular meadow with really bright sunlight, and one of them was a beautiful, sparkly boy and one was just a girl who was human and normal, and they were having this conversation,” said Meyer about her dream. “The boy was a vampire, which is so bizarre that I’d be dreaming about vampires, and he was trying to explain to her how much he cared about her and yet at the same time how much he wanted to kill her.”

Meyer’s vampire stories became a sensation among teens and adults alike. Besides hitting the bestseller list and selling 70 million books worldwide, Twilight became a box office hit at the movies earning upwards of $380 million. Vampires may be the stuff nightmares are made of, for others it takes a little more to frighten them. Here are some of the scariest movies of all time.

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Source: RD.com

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