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Chinese alchemists accidentally discoverer gunpowder, while looking for the secret of eternal life
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they were pieces of magnetic mineral called lodestone.
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The earliest Chinese steel was made from cast iron. The Chinese were the first to learn how to make cast iron by melting and molding iron ore. Later they learned that blowing air into molten, or melted, cast iron causes a chemical reaction that creates steel. Steel is a great deal stronger than iron.
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Porcelain is made by combining clay with the minerals quartz and feldspar. The mixture is baked in a kiln, or pottery oven, at very high temperatures. The resulting pottery is white, hard, and waterproof. However, light can pass through it, so that despite its
sturdiness it looks quite delicate and beautiful. -
paper was probably made from hemp and bark of the of a mulberry tree
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Chinese invented a technique called woodblock
printing. The printer first drew characters symbols on
paper. He then glued the paper to a wooden block. When
the glue was dry, the printer carved out the wood around
the characters, leaving the characters raised on the wood.
To print from the block, the printer covered the characters
with black ink. Then he spread paper over the block and
smoothed the paper with a brush. -
Printers used woodblock printing to make the cards from thick paper. Famous artists drew the designs that appeared on the backs of the cards.
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Movable type consists of separate blocks for each character.
Printers made their type by carving characters out of clay and baking them. To print, they selected the characters they needed and placed them in an iron frame in the order they would
appear on the page. -
Rocket technology was developed in China during the Song dynasty. Rockets were powered by a black powder made of saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur. At first, rockets were used only in fireworks. Later, the Chinese used them as weapons. They even developed a two-stage rocket for their armies. The first stage propelled the rocket through the air. The second stage dropped arrows down on the enemy.
