What took so long?

Quote: boymimbo

Static electricity is a far cry from alternating and direct current.

Not that far.

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The ancients knew nothing of conductors or wires.

Because they dind't look. When "natural philosophers" got interested in it int he 18th Century, they found ocnductors, insulators and other things in time.

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There was no technology to create copper wires,

It wouldn't have been that hard to do. Copper had been worked on for hundreds of years by the time of the Mycenean period. Jewlers did things similar to wires with copper, bronze, gold and silver. Metallurgy was a mature business, in an ancient technology kind of way, by the time of the old Assyrian empire.

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and certain no capability to create batteries.

Nor in the XVIII Century until Volta discovered batteries could even exist.

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There was really no use for electricity either;

When Faraday demonstrated his discoveries he was asked what good were they. There's never any use for somethign new and revolutionary precisely because it's new and revolutionary. But uses would have been found in short order.

A person could imagine himself into going back in time and wowing everybody with what they now knew, winding up out-doing Merlin in King Arthur's court .... oops ...

There's a pretty lame story by Harry Turtledove, I forget the title, where aliens arrive on Earth to conquer it, naturally, but their weapons technology is woefully inadequate to the task. They carry single-shot muskets and they have large gunpowder cannons. They're defeated in a matter of hours. Later when their commander is being interrogated, he reacts with fear to things like tape recorders and electric lights.

What gives? Well, it turns out they have something they call contragravity and hyperdrive, but their technology in the main is about where Earth's was in the XVIII Century. The contragravity allows htem to fly into space, and the hyperdrive lets them travel faster than light. Apparently these technologies were ridiculously easy to develop, but somehow the more advanced humans have missed them entirely.

I don't buy it for a minute, and it's not even a very good story, but it does raise the thought: are there any laws of nature, scientific discoveries, technologies and such which we could have found, discovered or developed rather easily by now, but which we have unaccountably missed?

The natural tendency is to say no. Science and technology tend to build upon earlier discoveries and developments. Yet in this thread I've shown it would have been possible to come up with a printing press at almost any time since the iron age began, and that the ancient philisophers might have studied elctricity since the days of the Hellenistic period. For that matter, a Greek artificer by the name of Hero built machines which used steam for motive power. These were simple things which dind't do much, but what if someone had followed up on the idea?

As for the latter, there is part of an answer as to why this didn't happen.

Ya can't really ask questions like these. The obvious answer, necessity being the mother of invention, tends to be an unsatisfactory answer when looking thru history.

Here's a perfect example:

Why did it take until the 17th century for someone to notice an apple falling and "discover" gravity?

Certainly, gravity was there all along. What was so special about Newton that he got credit for it?

Quote: Nareed

are there any laws of nature, scientific discoveries, technologies and such which we could have found, discovered or developed rather easily by now, but which we have unaccountably missed?

Well, consider the most studies substance we have ever had is the molecule of carbon. All organic chemistry involves carbon and much inorganic chemistry involved the study of carbon ... yet look at the various recent discoveries of a form first noted in carbon arc lamps and now we also have buckeyballs for nano sized carbon. Yet people have been playing with coal since time immemorial.

Quote: Nareed

, a Greek artificer by the name of Hero built machines which used steam for motive power. These were simple things which dind't do much, but what if someone had followed up on the idea?

A steam device that has no immediately obvious practical value is similar to the "wheel" being invented in mountainous country without roads. It becomes, at most, a child's toy.

Also sometimes its not the invention that is significant but a refinement. Gunpowder was invented and revealing the formula was a death penalty offense throughout the civilized world but gunpowder never meant all that much until its corning process was discovered. Then you had easily workable, refined gunpowder with precise amounts and known qualities.

Quote: DJTeddyBear

Certainly, gravity was there all along. What was so special about Newton that he got credit for it?

That whole thing about "discovering gravity" is a simplified version of what Newton did; the apple bonking the head is ridiculous. Galileo had already done a lot of experiments, and for that matter any dummy of the time knew if you stepped off a cliff you were heading down fast.

What Newton [and probably a contemporary] did was to put it into that formula of 32 ft/sec^2. To get this number and its derivatives was something that eluded other people, for example Galileo. Somebody else could probably describe this better than me, but it was a matter of taking data and realizing the number was 'being approached' by imagining that an infinite number of reductions - unobtainable in a finite world - was approaching said number.

The book "A clockwork universe" is a very well written book that explains a lot of this well and is very approachable to the average person. I highly recommend it.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Clockwork-Universe-Newton-Society/dp/0061719528

It was actually a few experiments that had to prove F = ma and show that the acceleration due to gravity was independent of the mass of the object (two objects, with the same wind resistent, and of different mass, will fall at the same rate).

Galileo and Kepler had the observational basis that helped confirm Newton's laws. Kepler's laws were a precursor to Newton. F = ma however is just as elegant as E = mc^2.

Quote: boymimbo

It was actually a few experiments that had to prove F = ma and show that the acceleration due to gravity was independent of the mass of the object (two objects, with the same wind resistent, and of different mass, will fall at the same rate).

All theories must be verified experimentally.

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Galileo and Kepler had the observational basis that helped confirm Newton's laws. Kepler's laws were a precursor to Newton. F = ma however is just as elegant as E = mc^2.

Galileo died in the same year when Newton was born. Kepler also preceded Newton.

Now, Kepler's laws of planetar motion are perfectly valid but he lacked the theory to explain them. that's fine. He made observations and described them. newton's law of universal gravitation explained why planets move as Kepler described. Had Newton's discoveries rpeceded Kepler's, we wouldn't know Kepler had ever lived (perhaps).

BTW not too long ago some scientists discovered a form of carbon called graphene. Carbon is a substance that gets plenty of study. Not only is it the basis of all life known, but it's also important in industrial combustion (coal and oil power plants, jet engines, Diessel engine, car engines, etc). Allotropes, that si different forms or arrangements of carbon, ahve been known for over a century. The chemical properties of a large molecule (all organic molecules are large), depends in a great aprt on its shape. It's physical properties even more so (including emergent properties). So the forms of carbon are important. As I said, many were knonw: rings, crystals, sheets, etc. Call them benzene, diamond, graphite.

Graphene is a thin sheet of carbon atoms arranged in a lattice. It shows many oddities and raises lot sof questions. In the lab, these first scientists to study it, made it by placing clear cellophane adhesive tape on graphite and peeling it off slowly.

That simple, yet it was overlooked or undiscovered for decades.

It does make me wonder what other startling discoveries have been missed for a long time.