Greek Thought
The scientists of ancient Greece were not called scientists, but rather named philosophers of their filed of study. These philosophers brought the human race forward incredibly fast, so fast that some people doubt it ever happened. As Leicester explains in his fourth chapter, the major flaw that ancient Greek philosophers had in their scientific knowledge was their tendency to generalize without sufficient data and not checking their hypotheses with experimentation. Greek thoughts also centered around cosmological ideas such as everything being real thanks to fire or air. The elements fire, air, water, and earth were the focus of many studies in alchemy, the earliest form of chemistry, rather than the individual components of substances. Most of the sciences try to explain the origin of the universe and what is in store, but Plato started looking to the future rather than the past in an attempt to understand the end goal of the universe. He also went in to explain atoms as a planar type structure that could bind together to only form cubic type structures. All of these thoughts trace back to the four elements of Empedocles. Any progression of the thoughts towards atomic structure was tossed aside in Greek society after alchemy was introduced. All of this halted any progression in chemistry for 1000 years.
Gold Article
This article focuses on the making of colloidal gold through older methods that date back to the 18th century in order to possibly create sub-nanometer gold nanoparticles that are widely sought out for their oxidation capabilities of organic substrates when utilizing oxygen. These methods were at first used to color glass and create a medicine utilizing gold. Through notes of chemists from the two periods they were looking at they concluded that gold particles were formed in the process of oily mixtures and distilling methods used to create these colloids. Through the utilization of current technology they were able to recreate the reactions and see for themselves the possibilities and results of these nanoparticles forming. The oils used in these reactions seem to allow the production of gold clusters and nanoparticles without hindrance. All in all the article’s author seemed confident that these methods should be looked into in order to produce these particles given the success they seemed to bring.
Ransom Calculation
41,025.64 gold per kg
Today’s Price of gold and silver per kg
568.43 silver per kg
Inca’s Ransom:
6,087 kg gold x 42,025.64 USD/kg = 2.497 x 108 USD
11,793 kg silver x 568.43 USD/kg = 6.703 x 106 USD
2.564 x 108 USD total for Inca’s Ransom