Beckman pH Meter

Beckman pH Meter. National Historic Chemical Landmark - 1934. , Arnold O. Beckman developed the first commercially successful electronic pH meter while a member of the faculty of the California Institute of Technology. This rugged and portable “acidimeter,” which had all necessary components housed in a single unit, allowed scientists to measure acidity accurately and rapidly. It immediately met an important need of the California citrus industry: how to measure the pH of lemon juice. The innovative features of the pH meter, including an early use of integrated electronic technology, were the basis for subsequent modern instrumentation developed by Beckman and Beckman Instruments. , Polyhedron with 432 Symmetry , The polyhedron in the fountain is a snub cube, an Archimedean semi-regular solid derived from a cube, with all its edges of equal length. This shape was chosen for the central fountain in the Beckman Institute because it mimics the symmetry of the iron storage protein ferritin, which has 24 identical protein subunits arranged in 432 symmetry about a core of perhaps 4500 iron atoms in the form of a hydrated ferric hydroxyphosphate. The snub cube has 38 faces and 24 vertices, the vertices then representing the subunits of ferritin.