ARE WE DRIFTING TO CHINA?

IF YOU live long enough you may yet reach China without taking train, steamer, plane or rocket. For both North and South America are suspected of drifting over that way and scientists are figuring how long it will take, and observers from many parts of the world have sent in their reports to Paris for comparison.
Read the rest of this entry »

Screening Fierce Battle in Drop of Water

YOU might not believe it, but ferocious and cannibalistic battles are staged every moment of the day in the drops of water that make up the rivers, lakes and oceans of the world.

A few of these battles are to be brought to the screen for the amusement and amazement of visitors to the Hall of Science at the 1933 World’s Fair. What will make this feat possible is a special projector which throws on the screen in a greatly magnified scale what is seen at the eyepiece of a powerful microscope.

Drops of water containing various species of unfriendly protozoa will be joined on the slide under the microscope connected with the projector. The battle to the death will be primitive and unmerciful, for protozoa are hungry and they ask no quarter and give no quarter. The artist’s drawing above shows how the projector and screen will be rigged up for the show.

view additional pages

Simple Electromagnet Does Mystifying Stunt

THE well-known barrel of monkeys could produce no more entertainment than an electromagnetic “circus,” consisting of a powerful solenoid magnet and a number of accessories, that you can construct in an evening.

And besides being a source of fun. such a device is highly instructive, and will serve to clear up many of the mysteries of everyday electricity for you.

The electromagnet or solenoid consists of nothing more than a quantity of insulated wire wound on a spool, and provided with a suitable base, connecting wire and plug. Read the rest of this entry »

view additional pages

New Ways of Fighting Earthquakes

by Daniel L. Hazard
Famous Earthquake Expert

WILL the learned men of science, with all their vaunted weapons, ever be able to do anything about the earthquake, the world’s most mysterious and devastating convulsion of nature?

Of course, one might as well try to stop a quake as to control the arrival of hurricanes, typhoons and tornadoes. But there is hope for the world in the fact that the newest scientific methods follow the sensible plan of studying the natural phenomenon with greatest care before attempting to solve its problems. These methods are now being followed by the seismology division of the U. S. Coast & Geodetic Survey.
Read the rest of this entry »

view additional pages

New Scientific Paintings Outline the Earth’s History

THE first seven of a series of paintings designed to present a systematic outline of the evolution of life on our planet has been placed on exhibition in the Ernest R. Graham Hall of Historical Geology in the vast Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. The paintings were made by the well-known scientific artist Charles R. Knight, and their production was made possible by Ernest R. Graham, patron of science. Although these seven paintings touch only a few of the high spots in evolution, their total time scope is considerably more than a thousand million years. Read the rest of this entry »

view additional pages

INDUSTRY GIVES A LABORATORY TO AMERICA’S YOUNG SCIENTISTS

YOUTHFUL, IMAGINATION, an inexhaustible national resource, is being developed along scientific lines by the American Institute of the City of New-York. This organization, chartered in 1828 and devoted throughout its existence to the promulgation of science and the encouragement of American industry, established its junior branch in 1928 and recently has intensified its efforts in this direction through the American Institute Laboratory at 310 Fifth Avenue, New York.
Read the rest of this entry »

view additional pages

Will It Perish in Collision with Some Huge Wandering Star— to Die in Flaming Dust as It Was Born?

The Story of Man and His World By Dr. E. E. Free A Fascinating Serial of Evolution This is the second of a fascinating series of articles on the secrets of life, prepared with the cooperation of some of the world’s leading scientists.

A TREMENDOUS burst of light blazed out in infinite space; two huge stars surged together at terrific speed. They shattered vast fragments from each other as they passed—and thus our earth was born!

No romance is more interesting, no chapter of science more inspiring, than the story of how modern astronomers have learned to read the meaning of the stars; of how they have gone exploring into the vast depths of space and come back with answers to some of the first questions that man ever asked himself; questions of what the stars are made of, why they shine, how far away they are.
Read the rest of this entry »

Light Proved Even Faster than Previously Determined

The speed of light, the magic number that affects nearly all laws of physics, is even faster than scientists thought. New experiments at Stanford University place it at 186,280 miles per second—eight miles per second higher than the old value. Even this small change may be important in radar and Loran. The researchers actually measured the speed of a radio wave—which is the same as that of light—by finding its resonance frequency in a “cavity” whose dimensions are known to a millionth of an inch.

This is pretty cool. The last paragraph talks about looking for the Higgs particle. Guess it didn’t work out.

view additional pages

Colliding-beam accelerators — will they reveal the ultimate particles?

Giant, high-energy devices can help reveal the forces that bind matter together

By PETER GWYNNE

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND The security guard studied our passes carefully.

I was sitting in a car with engineer Vince Hatton at the entrance to a tunnel in the spacious grounds of the Centre Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire, known universally by its acronym CERN, in Geneva.

Despite its title, CERN has nothing to do with nuclear power. It is a center for the study of high-energy physics, the science that reveals the fundamental basis of matter. The security guard who stopped us was more concerned with checking passports than flushing out terrorists. For after he approved our papers, and Vince drove the few hundred yards through the tunnel, we emerged in France. CERN and its huge accelerator known as the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) stretch across the boundary between Switzerland and France, and the special tunnel allows scientists to move themselves and their equipment easily within the installation without having to pass through the passport and customs posts above ground.
Read the rest of this entry »

view additional pages

Icy Missiles from the Summer Sky

by Calvin Frazer

Do hailstones enter the earth’s atmosphere, like falling meteors, from the outer spaces? In this article Mr, Fraser explodes the “Cosmic Ice” theory and explains just how hailstones are formed in hot weather by the violent upward air currents of gigantic thunderheads.

WHAT is hail? And what isn’t? If you can answer these questions you are wiser than the professional weathermen were until a generation or so ago. Up to that time three totally different things had generally been confounded with one another under the single name “hail”, and confusion on this subject still prevails widely outside of scientific circles.
Read the rest of this entry »

Amateur Chemist’s Robot
Hyman Cordon, chemical student, of Boston, with a “man” he built out of rubber, glass, and other scraps. It eats food and digests it in human fashion, having heart, intestines, lungs, bladder, etc. It was exhibited at a recent “science fair.” (Int. News)

view additional pages

The MYSTERY of HOTTER and COLDER

THE STRANGE effects of extreme heat and cold on common substances is arousing interest in what may become a field of sensational discovery.

For years man has sought to extend his command of temperature and pressure, but until quite recently he was restricted to the ordinary temperatures found in nature. Today there are about ten special low-temperature laboratories scattered about the world. After twenty years, the low-temperature laboratory at Leyden, Holland, has succeeded in coming within five-thousandths of a degree of absolute zero, which is —273 degrees Centigrade. This establishes a record for cold that is likely to stand for some time.
Read the rest of this entry »