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.

Preliminary figures over a seven year interval do not show us traveling westward, but, say scientists, the drift is so small the human error factor in the many observations may be just enough to counteract the drift. And so they still cling to the hope that the Americas are on a westward journey to join Asia.

In 1926 and again in 1933 stations were set up at Greenwich (England), Ottawa, Vancouver and Tokio in a northern chain, and at Algiers, Washington, San Diego and Shanghai in a middle zone. In addition, many other observatories throughout the world took part. In 1926 there were over 40 observatories at work on the theory and in 1933 about 100 took measurements.

All these observations are being taken to prove or disprove the Wegener theory that North and South America once were joined to Europe and Africa Because of the interlocking jig-saw shape of the four continents, geologist Wegener advanced the theory that the four continents and Australia were once one land mass.

The observations, taken with a large assortment of instruments, wireless signals, and the help of the stars, covered between two and three months in 1926 and 1933. Each observatory completed a preliminary computation and then handed the whole thing over to the International Time Bureau at Paris, where the final results are being compiled.

According to the theory, the continental drift amounts to two or three feet per year. The amount is largely guess work, however. But on the assumption that the amount is right, it would take 50 years before the Americas moved 100 to 150 feet towards China. Which is not a large amount on a continent measuring 3,000 miles.

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.

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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.

You can obtain a large wood spool from almost any electric shop that does motor repairing; or perhaps the wire you purchase for the magnet will be on a suitable spool. The one illustrated herewith measures approximately 3-3/4 in. long and 3-1/2 in. across the ends.

Winding the Electromagnet The amount of wire you can use varies within considerable limits. About 3 lbs. of No. 22 enameled, cotton-covered magnet wire will do; or you can use 7 lbs. of No. 20, or 15 lbs. of No. 18 wire.

The larger the wire, the less quickly will the coil overheat. If you have access to a screw-cutting lathe or a coil-winding machine, you can do a neat job, putting the wire on in even layers, with a thickness of oiled cloth tape or other insulating material between layers, as shown in Fig. C.

You can do an equally satisfactory job by hand. A few inches of each end of the “wire should project through holes in one end of the spool.

Mount the coil in a vertical position, on a hollow wood base so that a core can be moved up and down through the hole in the spool. The base illustrated in Fig. 5 has sloping sides, and measures 5 in. high, 5-1/4 in. square at the bottom and 4 in. square at the top.

The spool is attached to it by means of two small bolts passing through holes drilled in the end that has the coil wires projecting from it. Also, there is a large hole in the center of the base, corresponding to that in the spool.

Wiring Up the Magnet The flexible electric cord to which the coil terminals are attached enters the base through a hole in one side, and is kept from slipping out by a knot tied near the end.

The best core consists of a bundle of soft iron wires held together by a wrapping of cloth, cord or other binder. The core should be of such size that it can be moved up and down in the spool hole, yet will remain in any position.

It should be of such length that, when the lower end is resting on the table or other surface supporting the coil base, the top end will be flush with the upper end of the spool.

In the model illustrated, this calls for a core 8-3/4 in. long. Instead of a bundle of iron wire, you can use a length of 1/2-in. steel shafting, as shown in Figs. 3 and 6, with almost equal results.

You can operate the coil directly from the 110-volt, alternating current house-supply line; or, if you find that it overheats rapidly, you can interpose a resistance in series with one of the leads. An electric heater element, suitably protected by a guard of some kind, will serve. A number of direct-current experiments also can be performed, using a 6-volt storage battery as a source of power.

Tricks You Can Do With the Coil Now for some tricks with the coil, using 110-volt A.C. current: The jumping ring is a spectacular and amusing performer. Adjust the core so that two-thirds of it projects above the coil, or insert the 2-ft. length of shafting into the hole. Drop over it an aluminum ring—a section of 3/4-in. aluminum tubing an inch or two long will do. as illustrated in Fig. 6.

Turn on the current. The ring will jump up the core and, if it does not fly clear of the core, will bounce up and down in a swing-like manner, finally coming to rest at a point some distance up the core from the coil.

The height attained depends on the weight. A copper ring, consisting of a single loop of copper wire with the ends connected, will do the same thing, but will not climb as high because of its greater weight. The Jumping Ring Trick Now, with the coil current turned on, grasp the aluminum ring in your fingers and hold it down against the coil end. Soon the metal will become warm, and you may find it necessary to let go of it. The energy with which the magnetic force is trying to push the ring away is converted into heat.

With the core end flush with the coil top, lay over it a thick piece of sheet copper as shown in Fig. 6. Turn on the current, and in a short time the copper will become so hot that water, when dropped on it, will sizzle away into steam. It is even possible to fry an egg on this improvised “stove.”

This leads to another interesting stunt. Make a coil by winding, around a bottle or other cylinder an inch in diameter, of 30 to 50 turns of No. 26 insulated magnet wire. Remove the coil from the form, bind it with cord so that it forms a ring, and connect the ends to the terminals of a miniature socket that accommodates a flashlight bulb.

Test the arrangement by bringing the coil near the top of the electromagnet, when the core is all the way down. The lamp should light. If it is too bright, remove some turns from the coil; if too dim, add more.

Secret of the Flashlight Bulb With the coil held snugly against the socket, and the bulb in place, dip the wire and base into melted paraffin, covering everything but the glass bulb. Now, if the paraffined coil is placed in a glass tumbler or beaker of water, and the container is set on top of the electromagnet, the lamp will light, in a manner mystifying to the uninitiated.

Another trick involves a dancing coil. Make a “spring” of fairly fine copper or aluminum wire by winding a dozen turns around a form, and arranging the ends so that they touch each other lightly. Drop the coil over the projecting core of the electromagnet, with the current-turned on. The coil will dance about in a startling manner, with sparks flying from the ends, if everything has been adjusted properly.

You doubtless will work out many more stunts. For instance, you will find that you have the necessary equipment for making 60 cycle noises when a tin can is set on top of the magnet.

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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.

In the first place, as a basis for future studies, a catalogue has been prepared of all past earthquakes in the United States, of which records are available, and provision has been made for collecting full information regarding future felt quakes as they occur, with the assistance of a great number of voluntary cooperators scattered all over the country.

In the second place, excellent progress is now being made in providing better instruments and better time control in existing seismological stations and in securing the establishment of new stations, so that the country will be more adequately covered by instrumental records.

It is now pretty generally agreed that the great majority of earthquakes are caused by adjustment of stresses in the earth’s crust. Any transfer of material, as by erosion, from one place to another, decreases the load on the crust at one place, and increases it at the other. No doubt other forces are at work all the time, causing changes in the relative positions of different parts of the crust. As a result of these movements there is a gradual accumulation of stress in the material. When the elastic limit is reached, then a break occurs, one part suddenly slips by another, and elastic vibrations are set up, which are propagated in every direction in various forms of wave motion.

In some cases, as in the California quake of 1906, the break occurs at the surface. Advantage is being taken of this fact to determine, if possible, to what extent stress is accumulating along the famous San Andreas fault, where the major movement occurred in 1906. Suitable movements on opposite sides of the fault have been connected by triangulation and leveling, and this work will be repeated at regular intervals in the future. In this way any change in the relative position of points on opposite sides of the fault either in direction or elevation can be determined.

Japan, scene of such terrific cataclysms of the past, is doing her share in investigation of earth convulsions. Particularly interesting is the work being done in that country in providing for the erection of buildings which may be expected to withstand earthquake shocks. In order that the structural engineer may work effectively in designing buildings to be erected in a region where quakes may be expected, he must have some idea of the movements and forces actually encountered in the central region of the earthquake, the amount of ground movement, vertical, horizontal and rotational, the velocity of motion, the period of vibration, and how these factors are related to the nature of the sub-soil.

Some information on these points can be obtained from the damage done to different types of buildings by an earthquake, but so far no instrumental records of these quantities have been made. Mr. John R. Freeman, a competent observer of earth convulsions, who visited Japan recently, has urged very strongly an investigation along two lines; in the first place, to develop suitable earthquake-recording instruments and install them in a region where a severe earthquake may be expected within a reasonable time, the instruments to be so constructed that they will be put in operation by the earthquake itself; and in the second place, the study of the problem in the laboratory by the use of model structures mounted on a platform to which motions simulating an earthquake may be given.

Another line of investigation to which much attention is being given is the makeup of Mother Earth, her interior, as well as her crust. This study is based on the travel-times of the various types of waves which are set up by an earthquake. But more of this later. Suffice it to say that with more and better instruments the available data is improving rapidly both in quantity and quality.

It is by means of the seismograph that most of our knowledge of earthquake movements is determined. Now the seismograph is rather a mystery. Its ability to detect many earthquakes which cannot be felt, to tell where they occurred, how much the ground moved even if the amount is so small as to be scarcely measurable, is positively uncanny.

As a matter of fact, however, the fundamental principle is simple, being based on certain modifications of the ordinary pendulum. A swinging gate can be considered as a special form of pendulum. Suppose that such a gate swings from two supports and that we have neither friction nor any force acting on the gate except through its supports.

Now, if one support is directly over the other, then the gate swings freely, but has no definite place for coming to rest. If the upper support is moved a little toward the gate so that it is not directly above the other, the gate will swing just as freely, but it will have a definite position of rest.

If we substitute for the gate a weight attached to a rod, or boom, we have one type of seismograph. The weight, like the gate, is balanced at a point of rest. The earthquake moves its supports, but owing to inertia, the weight for a time remains in the same position. Actually after a time it starts to move, and this complicates the record and introduces the necessity for damping the motion.

The recording apparatus is essentially a drum revolved by clockwork or by electrical means at a constant speed. Paper is placed on the drum, either smoked paper for visible recording, in which case the record is made by a stylus, or else photographic paper, in which case the record is made by a suitably directed beam of light. The latter method is more accurate since there is no friction in the recording. The former method is more convenient in some respects since the record can be used without development as soon as it is known that an earthquake has occurred. In any case, the seismograph is in continuous operation. A complete installation consists of two horizontal component seismometers which are set at right angles to each other, and a vertical seismometer. There are no installations of the latter instrument at the stations, scattered throughout the country, of the U. S. Coast & Geodetic Survey, since there is at present no apparatus available for the purpose. However, the Bureau of Standards is now at work on the development of a suitable instrument.

At first sight the seismograph, or smoked paper record of an earthquake, seems to be merely a confused series of waves which have little meaning. It has required many years of study by competent investigators to learn their full significance, and there are still many unsolved problems, but the fundamental ideas are not at all difficult to grasp.

Briefly, an earthquake sends out three types of waves. Two of these take the same path, either a straight line through the earth, or else a curved line, not departing very much from a straight line. But the waves travel at different speeds. So one of them gets to the seismogram first and its time of arrival is recorded. Then the other wave arrives, and it also is recorded. The difference in time may range from a few seconds to 20 minutes, but each difference corresponds to a certain distance. For instance, the time difference at Cheltenham, Md., for the earthquake of February 28, 1925, was one minute and 57 seconds, and this corresponds to a distance of 670 miles, which agrees well with the results of other stations.

The third type of wave travels along the surface of the earth at a still slower rate, and its time of arrival also helps to fix the distance. Actually the waves are reflected and are very complicated, but this is a matter which concerns the seismologist only. In practice the times of the different wave phases are obtained from tables or from curves. These vary somewhat ac- cording to the author, but in general the differences are not very considerable. If we know from surface damage the place where earthquakes occurred, then we can use a similar method to get the velocity of the waves from the known distance.

In addition to this laboratory system of studying the quake, the reports of eye witnesses are likewise considered to be important. The work of collecting such reports is well organized by our government.

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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.

Most of us know best the geologic time divisions—eras, periods and epochs—which lie nearest our own times; for example, the Tertiary Period (”Age of Mammals,,) or the Mesozoic Era (”Age of Reptiles”) immediately preceding it. Still farther back we recall the “Age of Fishes,” and next the times when only small, still less interesting animals were on the earth. As we continue, however, to push the already dim horizons of geologic time back to the ultimate, we once more enter into intensely interesting eras—the very earliest ones during which life on earth doubtless originated. Perhaps the larger part of this interest is due to the fact that the origin of life, like its nature, is a profound but intriguing mystery—and we all love mysteries.

» FEW realize how long the early, most primitive eras of geologic time were, or that they occupied fully two thirds of the total life of the earth to date. For example, between the time depicted in the picture at the top of the page and that of the third picture, there was a lapse of roughly 1,000,000,000 years—yet even then life had not gone far on its career of evolution toward the higher, more complicated forms of the present times.

Geologists divide this inconceivably long duration into two eras, a later one in which there was life (the Proterozoic) and an earlier one (the Archeozoic Era), at some time during whose 500,000,000 years we believe life must have begun. How much of this time elapsed between the birth of the Earth from the Sun and the very first manifestations of life? No one knows. There is no known direct evidence. The soft primitive protoplasm of the living things of that time doubtless left little or no fossil record, and if it did, the record was subsequently all or nearly all obliterated by heat and other potent natural agencies.

Geologists from time to time discover earlier and earlier fossil evidences of life, but as yet these carry us only a small fraction of the way back toward the beginning. Professor J, W. Gruner of the University of Minnesota has discovered, in rocks of late Archeozoic Age, certain microscopic fossils of something resembling the modern blue-green algae which a student’s microscope will reveal today in many samples of pond water. Even these and similar evidences have, however, been called in question by Professor J. E. Hawley of the University of Wisconsin who asks us at least to investigate the possibility that they are merely chemical manifestations like those called “imitations of life” which can easily be “created” by mixing ferrous sulfide and water glass, and which exhibit many of the characteristics of living matter but do not live. Indirect evidence—the widespread presence of graphite in metamorphosed rocks of Canada; the presence of red (oxidized) sediments proving the existence of oxygen available for life, and other indications discussed in geologies (Schuchert’s “Historical Geology,” for example)—more than hint that life abounded in and during many of the 500,000,000 years of the Archeozoic Era which are such a mystery and a challenge to us. But such indirect evidences are not the kind that satisfy. How did life start and what is it? For both of these questions there are scores of hypotheses but little conclusive proof. What science seeks is not more hypotheses but some kind of direct, conclusive, fossil evidence. This we may never succeed in finding.

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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.

Its aim is to direct and utilize the imaginative faculties of youth which, since the founding of the institute, have been turning more and more toward science and mechanics. Under its wing are more than 730 juvenile science clubs, scattered throughout the United States, its possessions, and foreign countries. Some meet in high schools, some in settlement houses, and some are spontaneous youthful organizations with cellar or attic laboratories and club rooms. In the aggregate there are more than 30,000 youthful club members.

They experiment with model airplanes, bacteria, telescopes, radio, tropical fish, light, sound, animal-breeding, and in numerous other fields. Their ambition is limited only by their own knowledge and the cost of equipment, and it was to obviate the latter difficulty to some degree that the American Institute Laboratory has been established with the cooperation of the International Business Machines Corporation, which gave the use of two floors of a New York City office building, and of the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company, which supplied the equipment.

There is room for thirty to work at a time, and the laboratory is used by three shifts daily. One uses it from 9 a.m. to noon; one from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., and one from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. It is open six days a week. Ordinarily, a student has the use of it for two periods a week.

Members of the junior activity clubs of the American Institute are eligible to use the laboratory. They are boys and girls from twelve to eighteen years old. Membership in their club, which pays dues of $2 a year to the institute, is the only requirement necessary except the ability of the student and the suitability of his project.

The student desirous of getting working space in the laboratory writes to the institute describing his project, its purpose, the equipment which will be necessary, and the time it will take. Allotments of space are made as it becomes available. The laboratory has projection microscopes, aquaria, a darkroom, drafting and drawing boards and equipment for their use, a wood-working shop with power sanders, lathe, drill presses, and other machinery, and departments fitted for special projects in radio, aviation, and the physics of sound.

There are tables fitted for glass-blowing, and other equipment with which students may manufacture some of the devices which may be necessary for the work they plan to do. A tool kit is issued to each student when he enters the laboratory, and at the end of his work period he replaces it, in condition to be used again immediately should a student in the next shift be engaged in the same kind of work.

There is a reference library, and students have access also to the library of the American Institute at its headquarters at 60 East Forty-second Street. The laboratory also has an advisory board of scientists in various fields who will answer students’ questions and give technical information.

Students are contributing constantly to the equipment of the laboratory. One is engaged in making a blueprinting machine, and another is working on a mimeographing outfit. Another is custodian of one of the stockrooms, working on his own project in his spare time.

Some of the budding scientists have domestic difficulties which interfere to some extent with their careers. One, whose mother is dead, has to leave a little early every day to get home in time to cook supper. So far as is known, supper never has been late, but an experiment he is conducting in hydroponics, to determine how onions thrive under varying conditions, suffered once for lack of sufficient attention.

Another fled to the laboratory as a sanctuary with his white mice. He had been breeding the animals to study the Mendelian characteristics of succeeding generations and about Christmas time last year, when he had reached the twelfth generation in his tests, his mother rebelled. Enough was enough, she said, and twelve generations of mice were altogether too many mice. She was exceedingly firm about it, too, and the young scientist had to lead an immediate exodus of his highly bred subjects. He found a temporary home for them with a neighbor until he gained admission to the laboratory. There the mice are housed in a cage built for just such experiments by one of the junior activity clubs of the institute in Maiden, Mass.

The clubs all over the country are engaged in just such work as is going on at the laboratory, though generally without the equipment that is available there. The institute plans to establish other communal laboratories in centers where they may be used by several clubs. As far as possible, projects are undertaken at the New York laboratory with a view to helping clubs at a distance. Cultures, for instance, are being grown there in large quantities so that they may be sent to outlying clubs.

The American Institute has a Science Fair every year in the Education Hall at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, at which members of the affiliated clubs exhibit their handiwork. The institute sends its own technicians to aid in setting up the more elaborate exhibits. Leading scientists and educators are among the judges at the fair. Last year on the opening day the attendance was 7,222.

Airplane models naturally are among the more popular projects of club members, and Richard Walton, a youthful aeronautical engineer who won a prize at the Pittsburgh Science Fair, designed and manufactured a wind tunnel with which to test the model craft. Alan Goodman designed a seaplane bomber which carried torpedoes in its pontoons, reducing air resistance. It carried machine guns in the wings and a cannon on each side of the propeller.

Wallace Cloud, fourteen years old, a student at the Grover Cleveland High School, is working at the institute’s Fifth Avenue laboratory on the distillation of household refuse. His experiments might put a high value on the garbage pail, as they indicate the possibility of extracting chemicals valuable both in medicine and for explosives.

Judges at the Science Fair have at their disposal $3,000 in prizes to be awarded for conspicuously good work. The Veterans’ Wireless Operators’ Association offers the Marconi Memorial Award Scholarship to institute members.

With the establishment of its laboratory in New York for boys and girls with a scientific bent, the American Institute feels that it has taken a long step forward in the program it undertook at the completion of its first hundred years for the training and development of the imagination of America’s youth. When other such laboratories have been established, the youth organization of the institute will become a close-knit national training school.

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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.

The First Science Astronomy was the first science. Six thousand years ago, on the plains of Chaldea, shepherds who watched by night under the cloudless desert sky learned to notice the stars, to understand their motions; thereby to tell the time or the points of the compass or to predict the coming seasons.

A little later the priests became astronomers and from the tall towers of the Babylonian temples men watched each night to chart the movement of the planets, to make star maps and observe eclipses; to inquire, in all earnestness and honesty, whether they could learn to read of human destinies among the stars. But though the stars had been studied for 60 centuries, we knew, even 50 years ago, almost nothing about what they really were. We knew that they were glowing bodies of some kind.

We suspected that they were a good deal like our own sun. We knew that they were very far off, but only for a scant dozen of the nearest ones did we have much idea of just how far.

Today we know enormously more than this. We know what chemical elements exist in the stars and that they are the same elements that we have on earth. We know the distances of more than 2000 of the stars. We know how hot they are; that some are thousands of degrees hotter than the sun, while others are cooler. We know that some stars are dwarfs even smaller than our sun, while others are giants larger in diameter than the entire * orbit of our earth. Three of these giant stars have actually been weighed and measured.

Two Star Streams We know that double stars exist; two great globes, each larger than our sun, revolving like the balls of a” dumb-bell around their common center of gravity. We know that all the stars are moving, that there are two great streams of them flying through each other in opposite directions, like ships coming and going on the sea. We even know something of the shape and size of the star cloud made up of these two streams, the cloud that includes all the stars we see and which is, for us, the visible universe.

Most of this tremendous increase in scientific knowledge has been due to an entirely new method of investigation, to an instrument called the spectroscope, which analyzes the light of the stars and tells us what particular kinds of glowing matter produced that light.

A Yardstick for the Heavens Another use of the spectroscope is as a celestial yardstick. By its help we can measure how far away the stars are; whether a star is moving toward us or away from us, and how fast. Some of the star distances thus discovered are astonishing. Even the nearest star, one that is close enough to be measured by ordinary surveying methods without using the spectroscope at all, is 26 trillion miles from the earth. For the more distant stars—the ones measured recently by the newer methods—miles become altogether meaningless and astronomers use the light-year, which is the distance that light, moving at 186,000 miles a second, will travel in one year. The farthest stars yet measured are 220,000 of these light-years from us. The visible universe, the cloud of stars that we see and of which our sun is one, is believed to cover the astonishing distance of at least 300,000 light-years from side to side.

These figures simply demolish the human imagination. Think of the distance from us to the sun. For a,man, that is a tremendous distance. An airplane flying night and day at 200 miles an hour would need a little over 52 years to make the trip. Yet this 52-year journey to the sun is only about one fourteen billionth of the distance to the farthest known star; about the same as the thickness of a sheet of paper in comparison with the distance from New York to San Francisco.

Two Billion Known Stars And in this astonishing depth of space there are over two billion stars that we know about; one star for every man, woman and child now alive in the world, and enough stars left over so that everybody in the United States could have three or four extra. Probably there are a vastly larger number of stars that we do not know about because they are too small or because they are dark and send no light to us. Billions on billions of stars, most of them larger than our sun; no one knows how many billions more of planets and earths and moons, of star clusters and of nebulae, all of them inside a space so vast that the nearest of them are trillions of miles apart—this is what we know of the universe.

And man, crawling around on his one small dust mote of an earth, has been able to stretch out the fingers of his mind through all this swarm of other worlds; has been able to weigh and measure and to understand.

No fact in the universe, no achievement of man, is more truly wonderful than this.

Now let us look back into time instead of out into space. How did this earth of ours, so tiny but so all-important to life, come to be formed? I T^he earth was once, we believe, a part of the sun. It was pulled out of the sun, ] billions of years ago, by an encounter with a passing star.

The sun is a star; one of the two billion odd stars that we know. It is not fixed at a certain point in space. On the contrary, it is moving about 13 miles every second, carrying us and all the planets with it. The other stars move too. All of them drift about in space like flying gnats in a great room.

When Drifting Suns Came Together The sun has been drifting about in that way for a very long time. It was once larger than now, and hotter. It had no family of planets as it has today. It was merely an unencumbered single star drifting about aimlessly by itself.

And then, one day, eight or ten billion years ago, another one of these drifting stars happened to come too close to our sun. Perhaps it came within a few billion miles; close enough, anyway, that the attraction of gravity between it and the sun grew to be dangerously large. This attraction pulled out of the half-fluid sun a lot of drops of matter, much as the gravity of the earth will pull drops of water out of a wetted sponge if you hold it up.

The other star moved on. It left behind a somewhat damaged sun; a sun surrounded by a great revolving cloud of lumps of matter that had been pulled out of it. Gradually these lumps gathered into larger lumps. These are the planets. The earth is one of them.

This is the modern idea of how the earth was formed. Our globe grew, you perceive, gradually; lump by lump, as the bits of matter that had been pulled out from the sun were picked up. Already six billion or eight billion years ago the earth had grown to about its present shape and size.

It- is reasonably certain that the earth at first was very hot, hot enough to be molten all the way through. Its surface was a sea of melted rock in which great flaming tides hundreds of feet high raced twice daily around the globe. Gradually the rock grew cooler. It hardened. After awhile there was a solid surface crust. And slowly, after many millions of years, this crust grew cool enough for water to collect in hollows on it and to stay there. The first oceans were formed.

Then ended the astronomical part of earth history; then the geological part began. With the first seas and what went on in them we come to the part of the story of the world that we can read in the record of the rocks.

The rocks under our feet, the rocks that make up the accessible crust of the earth, are in separate layers, piled one on top of each other like a pile of blankets in a store. Geologists call these layers strata.

Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, other convulsions of the earth, have twisted and torn these strata. Layers that were once deep down in the earth have been tilted up so that they are exposed on the surface where geologists can get at them for study. And so, gradually, we have learned a good deal about what they are, about which layers are on top and which underneath, all over the earth. We have learned, too, how these rock layers were made. There is no doubt that they were formed in water; that most of them were produced in about the same way that rocks are still being formed on the bottom of the ocean close to the shore —by the slow hardening of loose sands and clays carried down by rivers into the sea.

How Earth Strata Were Formed Very few rivers are entirely clear. There is always a little sediment, as you can prove for yourself by allowing a little of the water of the Mississippi, for example, to stand a day or so in a glass. This sediment goes out to sea with the water. More sediment, the sandier part of it, washes out along the bottom of the river. All of it, when it gets to the sea, falls to the bottom. There it gradually hardens. It is slowly changed into rock, into sandstone or slate or, with the addition of chemically formed lime, into limestone.

Now and then a fish dies and its bones sink to the bottom. Occasionally a shellfish or a tree trunk or the bones of some land animal, wash out and are buried by the mud. These make the fossils. Millions of years later the fossils and the sediment together, raised above the sea by some movement of the earth’s crust, will make a rock layer for future geologists to study.

Thus were formed the strata of the earth. Sometimes rock was formed near the shore, so that we can see in it the footprints of some great reptile that ventured out one day, millions of years ago, onto a muddy beach while the tide was low. Sometimes we find layers of coal where the rank vegetation of some seashore marsh gathered for ages and was buried. Altogether there are at least 55 miles of strata, for that is about the total thickness of the rock layers that geologists have identified and mapped.

How much time does this involve? How long did it take for these 55 miles of rock to accumulate, sand grain on sand grain, in the sea?

Until very recently geologists were not sure. The rate at which the sediment accumulates is irregular. It depends on the speed of the rivers from year to year and age to age. The age of rocks in years cannot be determined merely from how deep they lie in the pile of strata. The problem seemed to be insoluble until the discovery of radium gave us the key to the puzzle.

The extraordinary thing about radium is that its atoms are explosive. A certain percentage of them explodes every minute. They leave behind them certain other elements, especially lead. Accordingly, if you find some radium in a rock, or, better still, if you find some of another element— uranium—the atoms of which explode more slowly, and if you also find some lead, you can conclude that the lead has been formed from the radium or from the uranium. Determine the exact amounts of uranium and of lead and you can calculate how long this has been going on—that is, how long it has been since that rock was formed.

This has now been done for many samples of rock from all of the various rock layers. We have learned the ages of all the different strata in the pile. The oldest ones, at the bottom, have the astounding age of about 1,600,000,000 years! We are not sure, of course, that they are exactly 1,600,000,000 years old. The radium clock is not quite so accurate as that. But we are sure that it was a very long time; a time to be measured, at the very least, in hundreds of millions of years.

And even this immense age is only the age of the oldest rocks. The earth itself is far older. Before rocks could be formed at all, the primeval earth had to finish its growth, had to become cool enough to hold a liquid sea, had to shrink enough to form ocean basins and thus to raise land above the waters.

How many billions of years it took for the earth to get this far in its development, no one knows. It is almost two billion years since the formation of the first rocks; it is perhaps six billion more since the birth of the world. Who knows how many more billions for the previous history of the sun?

This is our astonishing vista of the past. Quite as incomprehensible, it is, as the quintillion miles of known space. In comparison with even two billion years, the whole history of America since Columbus is no longer than eight minutes out of a human lifetime!

So much for our vista backward. Can we look forward too? Can science return at last to the ancient effort of the first astrologers and learn to read the future from the stars ? Is our earth destined to perish in a stellar collision, to die as it was born in the flaming cataclysm of two stars that chance to come too close together?

Perhaps it is, but such a flaming doom is far from imminent. The nearest star is some 26 trillions of miles away. For the sun to go so far will take over 60,000 years. Even this is far too short, for we are not moving in this direction and even the more distant stars toward which we are moving are moving also. Long before we get there, they will be gone. Other stars, of course, will have moved in to take their places. Perhaps one of these is destined to hit us; but space is wide and the chance is small.

I have compared the stars in space to gnats flying about in a room. If the gnats are as far away from each other, on the average, as the stars are, there will be about seven gnats in a room two miles square. You can imagine that there will be small chance for two gnats accidentally to bump into each other. Probably life’s record in the future will be even longer than its record in the past.

And what is this record of life’s past?

That is the story we are telling in this serial; the story last month, of how life began; the story, next month, of how man arose out of the lower creatures.

When Life Began When the earth was fully formed and had grown cool enough for life, when the ocean was ready, when there were rocks and a seashore and an atmosphere clear enough for the sun to shine through, then life began. We find its traces in the oldest rocks, the ones at the very bottom of the” pile of geologic strata. A little higher in the pile we find more complicated creatures —worms and shellfish and the curious buglike trilobites, who dominated the seas for perhaps 200,000,000 years.

But was life to go on forever in the seas where it had begun? Was the land never to be conquered by higher forms of life? Was man himself never to emerge as the masterpiece of evolution among innumerable land dwelling animals?

These questions would not have been answered as they have been but for the blind efforts of a curious race of fishes, which, in the next article, we see striving to perfect their bodies so that they could conquer a new realm for life. We see how they struggled generation after generation, age after age, to learn to breathe air instead of water; and how Nature finally conspired with them to perfect one of the most revolutionary inventions of all time— the invention of the lungs.

Next month Man’s Animal Ancestors; His Family Tree—another thrilling story in this amazing series! Simply and understandably, Doctor Free will tell the most absorbing mystery and most fascinating romance of science—life and its conquest of the world. His story is big, vital and interesting.

Ask your newsdealer today to save your copy of POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY for May.

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.

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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.

Improbable as the idea of a particle accelerator located in two countries may sound, it is no more unlikely than physicists’ plans for the huge ring-shaped machine. Within three years, they expect to inject into it two beams of elementary particles that will whirl around in opposite directions at almost the speed of light, and then crash into each other time after time at six “crossing points” inside the ring. It’s rather like asking William Tell to fire his arrow, not at an apple, but at another arrow already in flight.

Twentieth-century monuments The CERN scientists aren’t working in isolation. Engineers are refining or constructing multimillion-dollar particle-collision machines at locations ranging from Stanford, Calif., to Hamburg, West Germany. Buried up to 40 feet underground, the machines will eventually appear to latter-day archaeologists as monuments to man’s search for the underlying secrets of nature, just as the ancient stone circles dotted across Ireland testify to the early Celts’ quest for spiritual perfection.

Everything about the particle accelerators is strictly twentieth century. Swathed in brightly painted magnets, the circular cavities that actually carry the particles extend up to four miles, inside tunnels 10 feet tall. Connected to the tunnels are smaller rings that generate the particle beams, and cavernous experimental halls filled with bubble chambers, magnetic detectors, and other huge devices that monitor the beams’ catastrophic crashes. In brightly lit control rooms, engineers order up realtime data on the beams’ behavior on banks of television screens, and order changes in response to computer-controlled alarms.

The purpose of the effort is profound. By monitoring and examining the subnuclear particles that emerge from the collisions between the beams, physicists hope to learn more about the fundamental nature of matter and the four forces (gravity, electromagnetism, and the weak and strong nuclear forces) that govern the universe.

The new accelerators will subject elementary particles to greater forces than any previous manmade machines and will almost certainly, say physicists, reveal fresh and totally unexpected insights into what matter really is. “Historically, every time we’ve had a new energy region to investigate, we’ve seen more of the peculiarities that weren’t observable before,” Phil Livdahl, of the Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratory outside Chicago, told me.

Stretching technology’s limits Attaining the ultrahigh energies requires technological inspiration and achievement of a high order. Engineers and physicists building the new machines are pressing old technology to its limits—and designing new technology that hasn’t yet been tested. New methods of focusing pencil-thin beams of particles, fresh ways of creating ultrahigh vacuums, and totally untried superconducting magnets operating at temperatures close to absolute zero are among the ingredients that will mean success or failure for the new wave of particle accelerators.

The very idea of crunching two beams of particles together contrasts with the more traditional designs of atom smashers. In the past, experimenters shot high-speed, high-intensity beams of protons, electrons, or other particles into solid metallic targets, and monitored the new particles produced by the bombardment. But that process is rather inefficient. The beams use up most of their energy in pushing back the targets. Only a small proportion remains to create the fresh forms of matter that provide tantalizing clues to the basic structure of nature.

At Fermilab, for example, the giant accelerator, two miles in diameter, creates beams of protons with energies of 400 GeV. (GeV stands for giga electron volts, or billions of electron volts. If one billion electron volts of energy were all transmuted into matter, it would produce enough mass to make a proton.) But when the Fermilab beam smashes into its solid target, only 28 GeV is actually available for forming new particles.

Colliding-beam machines, by contrast, work with total efficiency. When two beams collide almost head-on, all their energy goes into creating new particles. So a relatively small machine that imparts just 15 GeV to each of two colliding beams of particles causes collisions involving 30 GeV of energy—more than the monstrous Fermilab device produces with its fixed targets. And as the amount of energy in the beams increases, so do the chances that their collisions will produce the rare and unusual new particles that physicists seek. “There’s a whole new domain of research to come out of this work,” Italian physicist Carlo Rubbia told me at CERN.

The machine builders, and the scientists who will design experiments for the machines, know that they are in a race for glory. The major target for the colliding-beam machines is a particle called the intermediate vector boson. Theoretical physicists think that the particle—or a series of three or more similar particles—is responsible for the weak nuclear force that is involved in some types of radioactive decay. By detecting the so-far-unseen particle, and learning its physical characteristics, the accelerator users could confirm once and for all the theory that won the 1979 Nobel prize in physics. That theory, devised by Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Glashow of Harvard, and Abdus Salam of Imperial College, London, among others, links the weak nuclear force and the electromagnetic force. It predicts that the intermediate vector boson should emerge at energy levels within the capacity of most of the new colliding-beam machines.

Of course, high-energy physics involves much more routine work than spectacular discoveries. Nevertheless, the big finds delight both scientists and administrators. “If CERN can pull off something like that every so often,” CERN director John Adams told me, “it improves the faith of the politicians in us.”

The politicians need to have faith because colliding-beam accelerators cost plenty—and the taxpayers pick up the tab. Among the major machines now under construction, Stanford University’s positron-electron project (PEP) comes in cheapest—at $78 million. The ambitious double- ringed Isabelle (for Intersecting Storage Accelerator) at Long Island’s Brookhaven National Laboratory carries a price tag of over a quarter of a billion dollars.

All the new machines share basic principles and ways of working. Experiments will take place in four stages: injection, acceleration, collision, and detection..

First comes injection. The two thin beams, normally generated in smaller atom smashers, are fired into the accelerators’ main ring or rings. The rings, a few inches in internal diameter, are surrounded by magnets and located in spacious tunnels through which technicians can drive as they trouble-shoot problems. In most cases, the beams will consist of bunches of particles no more than a few feet long. Isabelle engineers, however, expect to generate continuous beams that will girdle each ring in their mammoth machine.

Next, acceleration. The magnets around the tubes will accelerate the beams from starting energies of a few tens of GeV up to hundreds of GeV, while keeping the beams sharply focused.

The job takes two different types of magnets. Dipole magnets (which, as their name implies, consist of a north and a south pole) accelerate the beams and bend them around their ring-shaped tracks. Quadrupole magnets, with two north poles and two souths, prevent the beams from splaying out to hit the sides of the tubes.

Most machines use three or four dipole magnets for each quadrupole— and the largest accelerators require truly spectacular numbers of magnets. The SPS at CERN, for example, contains 744 dipolar magnets and 216 quadrupoles; Isabelle will carry more than one thousand magnets when it’s completed in the middle 1980’s. The magnets will force the beams to make billions of revolutions each day.

Subnuclear rumbles Once the beams are traveling sufficiently fast and energetically, they will smash together. Engineers using computer controls will force them to collide at anywhere from one to six regions around the rings. The head-on crashes will occur over regions up to two feet long and minute fractions of an inch thick—about the diameter of pencil lead.

Finally, complex instruments costing up to $14 million apiece and weighing perhaps thousands of tons will monitor all the particles created by the subnuclear rumbles. Directed by yet more magnets, the products of the collisions will stream out in series of beams into experimental halls where the detectors are mounted.

For all the basic similarities, no two colliding-beam machines are alike. They use different particles, different levels of energy, and different types of magnets to achieve their goal of contributing to high-energy physics—and making the significant finds before their rivals.

Machines that bring together beams of electrons and positrons (the latter being, in effect, electrons with positive, instead of negative, electric charges) have proved quickest off the mark in the high-energy physics stakes. Research teams at the Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron, known as DESY, have already made some notable discoveries with their $52 million PETRA collider, which slams beams with 19 GeV of energy into each other. Scientists started injecting beams into a segment of Stanford’s PEP, which resembles PETRA, last fall—although the ring remains incomplete. At Cornell University, project head Boyce McDaniel reported that the new Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR) “has given very encouraging results” in its early tests.

Because it’s difficult to accelerate electrons, none of those machines generates enough energy to produce the long-sought intermediate vector bo- son. That task will fall to a collection of huge accelerators using protons, which come on line within the next half-dozen years.

Scientists at CERN will undoubtedly take the first crack at the task. They are adapting their Super Proton Synchrotron, which presently slams a single beam of protons into fixed targets, to accept a second beam of anti-protons—the particles whose fundamental properties are the exact opposite of those of protons. “The hardware for the proton-antiproton experiment should he ready by 1981,” said John Adams. “Then,” he added confidently, “it’s just a matter of time before we see the intermediate vector boson.”

U.S. labs giving chase But technical difficulties, scientific problems, or just plain bad luck could throw off that schedule. The teams at Brookhaven and Fermilab haven’t yet given up the chase, although they expect that their machines will be competing with CERN’s to see unexpected new finds rather than the elusive intermediate vector boson. “It’s clear that if Isabelle were coming in two years earlier, CERN wouldn’t have such an opportunity,” lamented Brookhaven physicist Nick Samios.

Isabelle has certain advantages. For a start, it will slam protons into other protons, unlike any other large machine on the drawing board. And the two beams will each possess 400 GeV of energy—appreciably above the 270 GeV per beam planned for the CERN collider and the 80-100 GeV believed necessary to detect the intermediate vector boson. Why such a margin of error? “We chose 400 by 400 because we distrust our theoretical friends,” Samios confided to me.

Even Isabelle won’t be the most energetic colliding-beam machine. That honor will go to Fermilab, which hopes to use a new ring now being installed with superconducting magnets to cause crashes between a beam of protons and another of antiprotons, each carrying an astonishing 1000 GeV of energy. “1984 would be a reasonable date for start-up,” Fermilab scientist Alvin Tollestrup told me.

Energy isn’t everything in high-energy physics, though. Experimenters try not only to make things happen at very high energies, but also to make enough things happen that their instruments will detect the events. The secret is to squeeze as many particles together in the thin regions in which the beams collide. Physicists have coined the term “luminosity” to indicate the number of individual collisions between individual particles in two beams meeting head-on, and ma- chine designers try to raise the luminosities as high as possible. “If you’re looking for a needle in a haystack,” project leader Jim Sanford explained as we drove around the 2V4 miles of land excavated for Isabelle, “it helps to have several needles.”

When completed, in about 1986, Isabelle will create more needles than any other colliding-beam device. Experts expect its luminosity to reach 1033—that’s one followed by 33 zeroes—collisions per square centimeter per second. The figure represents an increase of one thousand over the luminosities forecast for the CERN and Fermilab colliders, and outscores the electron-positron machines by a factor of ten.

Scalpels vs. sledgehammers Electron-positron machines have their own unique advantages. Because both particles are truly fundamental and indivisible, collisions between them tend to yield relatively small numbers of easily detected new particles. Protons and antiprotons, by contrast, have their own substructure; theorists think that they each consist of three of the elementary particles called quarks, linked together by evanescent particles known as gluons. Thus a crash between a proton and an antiproton produces a huge shower of new entities—enough to tax the most sophisticated detector. Collisions between two protons are even more productive.

Because of their particular properties, experimenters plan to use the different particles in different ways. “Electron-positron collisions are like scalpels, and proton-antiproton ones like sledgehammers,” explained Nick Samios as he ran through the list of machines on his blackboard at Brookhaven. Thus physicists expect to make fresh discoveries with proton machines, and then characterize and refine the finds with electron devices. That’s already happened once. In late 1974, teams of researchers at Brook-haven’s alternating-gradient synchrotron, a proton machine, and the two-mile Stanford Linear Accelerator, an electron device, simultaneously spotted a particle that became known as the J/psi (or gypsy). Just what the particle was became clear when the Stanford researchers re-examined it with their electron machine. It plainly contained a new type of quark that had been forecast 10 years previously by Harvard’s Sheldon Glashow.

One of the new electron-positron colliding machines has already notched a major achievement. Last summer, scientists working with Hamburg’s PETRA reported evidence for the existence of gluons. The cleanness of the collision between an electron and a positron made the discovery possible. When those two particles collide, theorists believe, they annihilate each other, converting all the matter into a great burst of energy. Almost immediately, new particles emerge from the cloud, in the form of two quarks. The creation of the pairs of quarks manifests itself as small jets of particles emerging from the collision region as the quarks quickly change into other, more identifiable, particles. Instead of two such jets, however, the PETRA researchers spotted three. The most likely reason: The third jet represented the breakup of gluons, which linked the pairs of quarks produced in the head-on collision.

The thrill of new discovery has eluded other centers of large colliding-beam machines so far. Their engineers face the more mundane concerns of getting the machines to work. Stanford University’s PEP has encountered the most irritating problems. For while new accelerators have a long tradition of starting up earlier than scheduled and coming in under their budgets, PEP is costing more and moving more slowly than expect- ed. Engineers expected to run the first beam around the PEP ring last October. Now, they say, that won’t happen until March.

Difficulties and delays John Rees, who heads the project, lays the blame squarely on American industry. “The vendors are performing in a way that, 20 or 30 years ago, I’d have said was scandalous,” he complained when I toured the still incomplete facility. “There are firms that take advantage of the fact that we’re virtually required to take the low bidder. They bid low to get the job, and then try to improve their profit by claiming in court that the conditions of the contract have been changed.”

Rees complains mainly about well-established technology, such as electrical installations. So it’s not surprising that engineers developing entirely new technology for their machines have also encountered difficulties and delays.

The main challenge is to produce superconducting magnets. Both Fermilab and Brookhaven have opted for this brand-new technology, because it reduces the amount of power required to create the colliders’ magnetic fields by up to 80 percent. But the technology is so novel that it’s scarcely out of the laboratory. “You start from scratch, and you don’t understand anything,” commented Fermilab engineer Tim Toohig.

Both laboratories face problems with their superconducting magnets. At one point, the factory at Fermilab had produced 100 magnets, but could use only 12. Brookhaven had to set up its own magnet factory after industry proved incapable of making the magnets. Even its own products aren’t up to standard. They seem unable to generate magnetic fields higher than 40 kilogauss. Unfortunately, plans for Is- abelle require the magnets to generate 50 kilogauss apiece—100,000 times the Earth’s magnetic field. “The magnets don’t respond in a predictable manner day in and day out,” Jim Sanford told me as we watched technicians wind coils for the magnets to tolerances of a millimeter.

Keeping the magnets frigid enough to operate as superconductors puts engineers in cold sweats. Every one of the more than a thousand magnets ringing Isabelle and the new Fermilab ring must be bathed in liquid helium to keep it within a few degrees of absolute zero, 273 degrees Celsius below freezing. “It turns out that refrigerators of the sort we need, working seven days a week under remote control, just don’t exist,” shrugged Tim Toohig. So Fermilab has jury-rigged a system with a huge central refrigerator that pumps an astonishing 1057 gallons (4000 liters) of liquid helium per minute—a machine that they picked up as surplus from Vandenberg Air Force Base—complemented by 24 smaller refrigerators installed in buildings around the giant accelerator ring.

Administrators at CERN avoided such headaches when they decided to use conventional magnets for their Super Proton Synchrotron, which carried its first beam of protons in May 1976. But they now have to rely on the ingenuity of their scientists to make the spectacular machine into a colliding-beam accelerator.

The problem, shared with Fermilab, is how to create and focus beams of antiprotons. Unlike protons and electrons, these particles can’t be easily generated in large numbers.

Both laboratories plan to make their antiprotons by smashing beams of protons into targets, and then feeding the small number of antiprotons that result into a storage device called an accumulator. In addition to holding the particles until sufficient numbers have built up to feed into the main machine to collide with protons, the accumulators will “cool” the antiprotons—that is, squeeze them into a well-focused beam.

The experts are only just learning how to carry out the cooling. A group at CERN spent nine months last year refining a technique called stochastic cooling. This is a kind of statistical trick that uses sensors to detect the positions of all the antiprotons in the accumulator, and devices called “kickers” to knock out-of-line particles back into the main beam. Fermilab has opted for another approach, “electron cooling,” which involves running a beam of electrons alongside the beam of antiprotons. By removing some energy from the antiprotons, the electrons straighten out the antiproton beam.

Particle riches The technological headaches will undoubtedly continue for many years. But once the machines start up, a surge of scientific discoveries will provide1 perfect analgesics. Physicists will start probing an entirely new region of nature, with only a hazy idea of what they will find there. Beyond the intermediate vector boson may come entities called Higgs particles, predicted by theories that unify the forces of nature. Studies of cosmic rays indicate that extraordinarily energetic particles may exist within detection range of the new machines. In fact, the greatest surprise to physicists would occur if the colliding-beam machines fail to turn up any surprises. The experts uniformly assume that a whole world of new wonders awaits the new generation of atom smashers—and that there will be more than enough riches for everyone.

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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.

A lump of ice that falls from the sky is not necessarily a hailstone. It may be sleet; in which case it looks like what it actually is—a frozen raindrop. Sleet particles are roundish or angular and mostly transparent. They are the size of coarse birdshot, and they fall when the weather is cold, but not intensely so; when, in other words, the temperature is somewhere around the freezing-point (32° Fahrenheit).

Sleet does not cling to branches, wires and the like, but it often falls in conjunction with rain, and the latter may form a coating of smooth, clear ice on such objects. This coating is known to science as “glaze”. Another kind of ice particle differing from true hail—though often called “soft hail”—looks like a miniature snowball. Its size is about the same as that of sleet, but it is not transparent. It is a sort of granular snow and frequently falls mixed with ordinary snowflakes. This kind of precipitation is now scientifically called “graupel”, a German term, in which the au is pronounced like ou in “out”.

Unlike sleet and graupel, a hailstone contains a snowy center, surrounded by clear ice, or when large, by several layers of alternately clear and snowy ice. Thus big hailstones have an onion-like structure, which is revealed when they are broken open. A majority of hailstones are roughly spherical, but many are conical, pear-shaped or flattened, and some assume other and more striking forms. Occasionally the surface is encrusted with curious crystalline growths. Hailstones vary greatly in size. The smallest are smaller than peas, and the biggest bigger than oranges.

True hail falls mainly in thunderstorms, but is always confined to an area much smaller than that of the storm as a whole. Sometimes it falls in squalls that are not attended by thunder or lightning, and it is also a rather frequent feature of tornadoes. It rarely lasts more than a few minutes but has been known to fall steadily in one place for more than an hour. It occurs chiefly in warm weather, and it is especially common in warm sub-tropical countries. The most terrific hailstorms on earth occur on the hot plains of India.

The falling of ice from the sky in hot weather doubtless seemed a prodigy to our ancestors, and some moderns have gone to great lengths of speculative nonsense in their attempts to find an explanation. One German, some years ago, startled the world with the “discovery” that hailstones enter the earth’s atmosphere from outer space after the manner of meteorites, and this so-called “cosmic ice” theory still crops up now and then in our Sunday newspapers.

The facts about the origin of hail are much less marvelous. Hot weather favors the occurrence of hail because such weather supplies the necessary energy for the violent updrafts of air that occur at the front of an advancing thunderstorm. These blasts carry raindrops and cloud droplets to the upper portion of the towering “thunder-heads”, which often rise five or six miles above the ground. The upper air is cold, even in midsummer. As the drops are swept aloft they soon cool to the freezing point but do not immediately turn to ice. They remain in an “under-cooled” state until, at a great height, they encounter ice crystals or snowflakes. Contact with these solid particles causes them to freeze instantly just as, in cold weather, the droplets of a drifting fog change suddenly to ice when they encounter trees or other obstacles, forming deposits of “rime”.

Collisions between the rising water drops and the snow particles produce little grains of snowy ice, or graupel. These are the . incipient hailstones. On account of their weight they tend to fall toward the ground, but in the turmoil of the thundercloud, which contains both rising and descending air currents, they are often carried alternately upward and downward several times before finally dropping to earth. At a high level a hailstone is coated with snow; at a low level it acquires a layer of water, which changes to clear ice in the course of a subsequent ascent. Thus the concentric layers seen in a big hailstone tell the story of several journeys back and forth between the upper and lower portions of the storm.

Incidentally, the size eventually attained by a hailstone depends upon the strength of the upward blast of air that supports it just before it falls to the ground. Big hailstones imply the occurrence in the thunderstorm of terrific vertical winds, which constitute a much greater danger to aircraft than the lightning that also accompanies such storms. It has been calculated that to enable a hailstone to attain a diameter of 3 inches the updraft of air must amount to from 92 to 125 miles an hour, according to the density of the ice in the hailstone. The corresponding figures for a hailstone 5 inches in diameter—a rare but not unheard-of size— would be from 185 to 250 miles an hour.

The largest hailstone positively known to have fallen in the United States was 17 inches in circumference and weighed l1/2 pounds. It fell at Potter, Nebraska, on July 6, 1928. Larger hailstones have been reported from other parts of the world, but there is much uncertainty about these reports. Extraordinarily big masses of ice picked up after hailstorms are usually the result of the freezing together of two or more hailstones while lying on the ground.

Among the many fictitious or questionable stories told about hail are those that report the finding of live turtles or other forms of life embedded in hailstones. When such creatures have actually been found in hail we may assume that the hail froze around them after it fell. There is, however, a well-authenticated case of a hailstone that brought down from aloft a living sphinx moth.

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)

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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.

On the other extreme, astronomers have made measurements of star temperatures that go beyond 40,000,000 degrees Centigrade. In still another related field, high pressure, Prof. P. W. Bridgman, of Harvard, has succeeded in changing the structure of many common substances by subjecting them to pressures equal to those several hundred miles below the surface of the earth.

At present man is far from equaling the internal temperatures of the stars. For a brief instant it has been possible to reach 20,000 and 30,000 degrees Centigrade in the laboratory. This was accomplished by exploding wires with tremendous electrical discharges. For a longer period of time it is possible to reach 5,500 degrees Centigrade by focusing the rays of nineteen high-power lenses in a solar furnace. The atomic hydrogen torch has made it possible to develop as high as 3,800 degrees Centigrade on a small spot. Beside the internal temperatures of the stars, however, these artificial temperatures are comparatively feeble.

For general purposes, it may be said the difference between the greatest heat and the greatest cold thus far produced by man is 5,773 degrees Centigrade, although he has, for a fraction of a second, gone as high as 30,000 degrees Centigrade and extended the temperature range up to 30,273 degrees Centigrade.

It is likely that men will be able to go beyond that figure, but it is extremely unlikely they will be able to exceed the cold of absolute zero. Greater cold is not known anywhere, not even in the upper reaches of space.

Why search for very high temperatures? We have reason to believe that if we could generate and control temperatures of 100,000 degrees or more, it would be possible to create new substances and find new properties for old substances. In the realm of extreme cold, the present interest centers around some recent experiments tending to show it is possible to freeze animals into a state of inactivity, as if they were dead. After remaining inactive for some indefinite period, the animal is revived by slow thawing and the application of stimulants.

Although there is reason to doubt that men can remain in a state of “suspended animation” by being frozen into a state of inactivity, there is no doubt that microbes can do so. Immersed in liquid helium at a temperature of —450 degrees Fahrenheit and kept there for weeks at a time, germs have come out alive and kicking, none the worse for their experience. This shatters many of our illusions about the frailty of microbes. There is much to say for their stamina. Prof. Bridgman’s work with high pressures has brought him into the realm of “hot – and cold ice.” Examining many solid substances, he discovered they pass through significant crystalline changes when subjected to high pressure. So far, he has distinguished some queer varieties of ice. “Hot ice Number one” may be heated to a temperature too hot to bear with the hand if enough pressure is applied to prevent it from melting.

To produce “hot ice Number one,” Prof. Bridgman applies a pressure of 90,000 pounds. To convert this product into “hot ice Number two,” he applies a pressure of 375,000 pounds. “Hot ice Number two” is hotter than boiling water when it melts, and it can be made to melt at a much higher temperature merely by raising the pressure. Besides the hot ices, Prof. Bridgman has produced a new form of cold ice.

High pressure on other substances effects profound changes. Rubber loses its elasticity and becomes a translucent horny material; paper is similarly affected. Having achieved this much in the application of high pressures, man’s present efforts are directed toward raising the temperature limits.

For the present, the method of raising a temperature of 5,500 degrees Centigrade in a hotspot sun furnace might bear improvement by some more efficient method of focusing the sun’s rays. However, the general belief is that if we are really to pass into the realm of high temperatures, we must first learn how to handle the slippery and mysterious atom.

It may be that the intense sustained heat and light of the stars is due only to high temperatures and pressures. The youngest stars radiate the most energy. One youngster, called Plaskett’s star, is held to have a central temperature of 500,000,000 degrees Centigrade. According to Sir James Jeans, “all processes which are affected by temperatures of less than 7,500,000,000,000 degrees leave the total number of electrons and protons in a star unimpaired.” This is a little more heat than we are prepared to handle on our planet, and indeed, it is more than is ordinarily discussed by astronomers.

The thermocouple device on the Mount Wilson telescope has already measured the surface temperatures of many heavenly bodies. Star surface temperatures range from 6,000 degrees Centigrade to 23,000 degrees but the interior temperatures are much higher. That of our sun, for instance, is estimated at 40,000,000 degrees Centigrade.

The absolute zero of temperature is —273.15 degrees Centigrade. Beyond this no one has ever gone. The boiling point of helium lies about four degrees above this. By reducing pressure on the liquid, it has been possible to reach within one degree of absolute zero. In the low-temperature laboratory at Leyden, Prof. W. J. DeHaas has reached the all-time low of only five-thousandths of one degree above absolute zero. Thus man has achieved a temperature which has not, so far as is known, been reached by nature herself. Interstellar space is held to be three degrees above absolute zero.

On the earth’s surface, the highest recorded difference between the hottest spot and the coldest spot is only 124 degrees Centigrade or 223 degrees Fahrenheit. The coldest spots where readings have been made are Alaska, —82 degrees Fahrenheit, and Siberia, —87 degrees Fahrenheit. The hottest spots are Death Valley, Calif., 134.1 degrees Fahrenheit, and Azizia, Tripoli, 136.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

Tungsten and graphite are among the substances with the highest known melting points. The highest temperature recorded with burning fuel is 2,000 degrees Centigrade, while an oxyacetylene torch flame may reach a temperature of 3,500 degrees Centigrade. The atomic hydrogen flame, 3,800 degrees Centigrade, is sufficient to melt or vaporize every known substance with the possible exception of carbon and the grinding material, tantalum carbide.

For the extremes of temperature, the ordinary mercury thermometer will not work. To measure the cold around absolute zero, it is necessary to employ a magnetic thermometer. This method increases in sensitivity as the temperature is lowered. Above 500 degrees Centigrade, the mercury thermometer must be discarded. It is necessary to use gas thermometers up to the melting point of platinum, 1,755 degrees Centigrade. For reading above the melting point of platinum, a form of optical thermometer is used. This works on the assumption that flame colors vary according to the temperature. But near the maximum temperatures obtainable by man, it is quite difficult to get accurate readings.

Microscope Magnifies 20,000 Times

A NEW universal microscope that has a magnification of 20,000 is expected to bring greater success in man’s battle against disease germs.

With present microscopes only germs that have reached maturity could be seen. With the new powerful 21 phase microscope it will be possible to study and photograph germs in immaturity, giving scientists a greater knowledge of the development of disease.

The microscope was invented by Dr. Royal R. Rife. Object and light are transposed 21 times before being photographed.

COSMIC RAYS MAY FORECAST WEATHER

Cosmic rays may help to prophesy the weather. This first practical use for the mysterious radiations from outer space was recently announced by Dr. R. A. Millikan, Calif. Institute of Technology physicist.

The “cosmic rays” are more penetrating than radium or X-rays, but it is not known whether they affect human beings.

Dr. Millikan, who discovered the source of the rays (P. S. M., July, ‘28, p. 13), has measured their strength with his new electroscope, and is able to determine high-altitude atmospheric conditions.

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England Now Has Gasoline Made from Coal

British motorists may now enjoy the novelty of buying gasoline made from coal, which has just been placed on public sale. The event marks the beginning of a great chemical industry by which England hopes to put 65,000 men to work and to end her dependence upon imported petroleum. A monster plant now rising at Billingham-on-Tees will transform 1,000 tons of coal daily into the synthetic fuel, using a process already in successful operation in a smaller experimental plant at the same site. In this process, known as hydrogenation, powdered coal is mixed with heavy oil and the resulting paste is fed, with hydrogen gas, to a converter. The mixture undergoes a chemical transformation under tremendous heat and pressure, yielding a mixture of hydrocarbons from which pure gasoline is recovered by distillation. Another of the products is Diesel oil, which may also be changed into gasoline by an additional conversion treatment with hydrogen. Both the hydrogen and heavy oil used in the process are obtained in the course of producing the gasoline, leaving coal as the chief raw material required. Results of production indicate that approximately a gallon of gasoline may be obtained from twenty-four pounds of coal, and the large-scale plant under construction should show an output of 80,000 gallons of gasoline a day.

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Cosmic Rays Trapped in Mountain-Top Laboratory

The Story of a Strange Outpost of Science, Nearly Three Miles Above Sea Level, Where Man Seeks the Answer to a Riddle of Nature

By John E. Lodge

ON A lonely 14,000-foot mountain peak, fifty miles west of Denver, Colo., two scientists have just moved into the only house of its kind on earth. Shaped like a wedge tent and completely sheathed with copper, it stands among bare, wind-bitten bowlders, far above the timber line. It is the world’s first permanent cosmic-ray laboratory.

Here, Dr. Joyce B. Stearns and Dr. Fred D’Amour, of the University of Denver, are studying the mystery bullets which bombard the earth from outer space. With clicking, chattering instruments, they will seek answers to such teasing problems as the exact nature of the rays, where they are born, and how they affect human life.

Few riddles have aroused greater scientific curiosity than these. Believed to originate in the empty spaces of the sky—the dark areas between the galaxies—cosmic rays are the largest “packets” of energy known. They can penetrate lead 100 times as far as X rays. Recent tests indicate that they are in part electrically charged particles and in part radiant energy similar to light and heat. They are unlike anything else we know, and they are engaging the attention of scientists around the world.

The two-room, mountain-top laboratory where the Colorado experimenters will work was especially designed to withstand everything from wild animals to February blizzards. It was constructed in Denver, knocked down, and then hauled by a caravan of eight motor trucks to the top of Mt. Evans, almost three miles above sea level. The twisting trail the cars followed was constructed especially for the purpose. Only one other road in the world goes so high.

At some points on this perilous trip, the laboring machines hugged the inside of the trail until their fenders brushed along the rock walls to keep from slipping over precipices. Inching around hairpin turns, they moved at a snail’s pace up the steep incline until all were safely at the top. There, skilled workmen quickly assembled the structure and roofers covered it with paper-thin sheets of copper.

This material protects the interior of the building from electrical disturbances, offers the least resistance to cosmic rays, and at the same time provides sufficient strength to withstand the gales and blizzards of the mountain top. As a further protection against electrical interference, all windows are screened with copper, and heavy cables of the same material run from the roof deep into the granite to which the structure is anchored, ending in moist earth surmounted by a layer of charcoal.

Within the copper shell of this lonely outpost of science, a battery of ray counters, gas-filled Geiger tubes, will record the shifting pulsations of cosmic energy. Seldom more than a foot in length, each of these glass tubes contains a copper cylinder and a rod of the same metal. One terminal of an electric generator is connected with the rod, the other terminal with the cylinder. Ordinarily, the current is unable to bridge the gap between the two. When a cosmic ray enters the tube, however, it ionizes the gas, or fills it with electrified particles which act as “ferry boats,” carrying the current across the opening.

These midget flashes of laboratory lightning are far too small to see. But the sound is amplified into a metallic click. At sea level, the clicks that record the passage of cosmic rays occur about one every four seconds. In the thin air of the mountain top, they are many times as numerous, the amplifier clattering continually like chickens pecking on a tin pan.

While Dr. Stearns is busy with his Geiger tubes and other apparatus, Dr. D’ Amour will concentrate upon the fascinating problem of what these potent rays do to living things. Generation after generation of white rats will live in the mountain-peak laboratory under the constant bombardment of the rays. The effect upon their evolution will offer valuable data for science to study. At present, there is no evidence that cosmic rays are injurious , to humans.

A thousand miles away from the Colorado outpost, on the shores of Lake Michigan, two other experimenters—the famous Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Arthur H. Compton, and his research assistant, Haydon Jones—are tuning up a twelve-ton, electromagnetic “speed trap” for the study of cosmic rays.

Five miles of copper wire, three quarters of an inch thick, are wound around the two poles of the giant magnet. To carry off the intense heat generated by the current, the wire is enclosed in oil which, in turn, is cooled by a stream of running water.

Connected with the magnet will be a Wilson “cloud chamber,” a glass box filled with gas saturated to the point where an electric charge passing through it leaves a trail of minute water droplets which can be photographed by an automatic camera. Thus, the path of an invisible ray can be recorded on film. If he can bend the cosmic rays that enter the electromagnetic field of the new apparatus, and then photograph their trails, Dr. Compton will have a key to measuring their energy. For, it is known that the higher the energy of the particles, the less they are deflected by such a pull.

In 1929, a Russian scientist succeeded in photographing the “ghost trails” of cosmic rays in a “cloud chamber.” But, even though the chamber was in a magnetic field, the paths were straight. The velocity of the particles was so great they were unaffected by the magnet.

In the past, apparatus available for such work could measure no more than 20,000,000,000 volts. The Compton device is expected to lift the limit to 40,000,000,000 volts. In the 7-1/2-inch space between the poles, the magnet can exert a pull of six tons. One out of every fifteen cosmic rays entering the magnetic field, it is estimated, will be traveling in the right direction to be photographed.

A large collection of these ghost trails will give science a clearer insight into the nature of the visitors from outer space. In addition to providing a yardstick for measuring energy, the experiments are expected to settle the question of whether the particles are positively or negatively charged.

A few years ago, extensive experiments at Mexico City with a cosmic-ray “telescope” indicated that the former is true. Dr. Thomas H. Johnson, of the Bartol Research Foundation of the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, made the tests. His instrument consisted of three ray counters placed in line so only the cosmic rays traveling directly toward the tube would be recorded by all three. Pointing this curious piece of apparatus at different parts of the sky, he found that the major ray stream travels from west to east. As the magnetism of the earth would naturally deflect positive electrical particles toward the east, it is assumed that cosmic rays are composed, at least partially, of positive electricity.

During the thirty-five years which have elapsed since the first hint of their existence, the story of cosmic rays has been one long succession of riddles. It was, in fact, a riddle which led to their discovery.

Back in 1901, workers in an English laboratory noticed a puzzling thing. They were testing the strength of radium with a small gold-leaf electroscope. In this instrument, a tiny electrical charge holds strips of gold leaf apart. When radium rays enter it, they ionize the air and permit the charge to escape, the rate of this leakage indicating the strength of the radium bombardment. But, the English scientists found, the charge leaks away gradually even when the electroscope is put away in its container. Various explanations were offered. One was that there might be radium in the earth nearby; another, that the atmosphere might contain some radioactive element. For nearly a decade scientists here and abroad puzzled over the mystery.

Then, in 1910, came the balloon flight of A. Gockel. This young Swiss physicist sailed high over Germany, carrying a small electroscope in the open basket of his balloon. If the leakage observed by the English workers were due to radium in the earth or to a radioactive element in the atmosphere, the effect would be less at higher altitudes, for there the instrument would be farther from the ground and in thinner air. Instead, a topsy-turvy thing occurred. The higher the balloon went, the faster the charge was dissipated. Other ascensions verified his observation. Science was left facing a blank wall.

So matters stood until after the World War. Two Americans whose names bulk large in cosmic-ray research, Dr. Robert A. Millikan and Dr. Arthur H. Compton, had become interested in the mystery and after hostilities ended they took up the trail. Dr. Millikan was the first to prove the puzzling effect was actually the work of rays bombarding the earth from cosmic depths.

The story of his search is one of the epics of science. Climbing mountain peaks in the Andes, sending aloft sounding balloons on the (Continued on page 115) Texas plains, making tests in a raging blizzard among the Rockies, lowering lead-lined boxes of instruments into the water of snow-fed lakes in the Sierras, he followed one clew after another. The mystery rays, he found, could penetrate the equivalent of seventy-three feet of water. Using this as the basis of computations, he calculated the wave length of a cosmic ray is approximately 10,-000,000 times shorter than that of light. It would take a billion such wave lengths to equal the thickness of one cigarette paper!

Four years ago, Dr. Compton organized an international survey in which coordinated expeditions made studies in all parts of the world. Later, automatic instruments circled the globe on steamers, recording cosmic radiation. And, recently, gigantic balloons, here and abroad, have carried scientists to the roof of our atmosphere where their instruments obtained additional data.

AN INNOVATION in high-altitude research started a few weeks ago in Texas. Dr. Millikan, still plumbing the upper sky with sounding balloons, began releasing tandem gas bags. Four or more of these strung together carry self-recording instruments to a height of from seventeen to twenty miles. Designed by Dr. Victor Neher, one of Dr. Millikan’s assistants at the California Institute of Technicology in Pasadena, the compact instruments include a clock, a camera, a cosmic-ray electroscope, a thermometer, and a barometer. Their total weight is only two pounds. In the thin air at the top of the ascent, the balloons burst and the instruments float to earth by parachute.

To get above the lower layers of the atmosphere, an expedition recently carried tons of equipment across deserts and rivers and mountains from Pasadena to Pike’s Peak in the Rockies. Heading this scientific trek was .Dr. Carl D. Anderson, noted for his discovery of the positrons, one of the invisible “building bricks” of which all matter is composed. At the top of the Colorado mountain, Dr. Anderson assembled his apparatus and snapped some of the most amazing pictures ever taken. They showed the flying fragments of an atom shattered by cosmic rays!

At the California Institute of Technicology laboratory, this research worker took eleven other pictures showing the same thing. The dream of the Dark Ages—the transmutation of metals—was actually taking place before the lens of his camera.

As everyone knows, particles of the different elements are composed of billions of molecules which are, in turn, composed of atoms, or groups of electrons clustered about a positive core, or nucleus. In any one element, such as lead, every atom has a certain number of electrons. If it loses or gains a single one, the atom is so modified that it is no longer lead but becomes some other element. So, when the cosmic ray blasts electrons from the atoms of one element, it changes these atoms into another element.

AS EFFECTED at present, this change is – only temporary since the lead immediately begins to expel other electrons and to rearrange those left behind, so that each atom again contains just the right number. At some future day, however, science may learn how to make the transformation permanent and so harness cosmic rays to the work of producing elements at will.

Just as sensational is another discovery made at the California laboratory—the creation of tangible matter out of light and cosmic rays!

Some years ago, two scientists in the Cavendish Laboratory, at Cambridge University, England, proposed (Continued on page 116) the theory that matter might be produced from radiation in the distant parts of the sky. Now, Dr. Anderson and his associates have proved that short-lived positrons appear here on earth as the result of cosmic-ray activity. Many of the mysteries of astronomy, such as the interstellar gas clouds, the outer atmospheres of giant stars, the faint glow of the sky on clear, moonless nights, may be traceable to cosmic rays. At least, that is the opinion of Dr. Fritz Zwicky, of the Pasadena institution. He points out that the terrestrial aspects of cosmic rays have been studied on many fronts, but that the astronomical effects of the endless bombardment is a field virtually untouched.

ACCORDING to the famous Abbe G. Lemaitre, Belgian mathematician, cosmic rays may be part of the odds and ends left over when our solar system was created. His startling theory is that a certain amount of matter and energy failed to condense with the stars and planets and was left speeding through space. The matter is occasionally visible to us in comets and meteors which flame through our upper atmosphere. The energy is what we call cosmic rays.

Today, after intensive research by hundreds of scientists, we are just beginning to understand this strange, enormous flow of energy coming to us from the immeasurable depths of space. We know less about it than we did about electricity in the days when Benjamin Franklin flew his kite into the thunderclouds.

What discoveries lie ahead? The research man, groping about in so strange a realm, hardly dares hazard a guess. In the copper-covered, mountain-top laboratory of Dr. Stearns and Dr. D’Amour, as well as in other research centers throughout the world, scientists are on the threshhold of amazing possibilities. What they will find when they cross that threshold, is one of the alluring uncertainties of modern science.

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Spectacular Fireworks

By STANLEY STEWART

IN making fireworks, if the experimenter will always remember that he is dealing with explosives that may pop off at any moment, and therefore exercises constant caution, the various spectacular night displays outlined in the accompanying article are not any more dangerous than playing with matches. At all times, care must be exercised in grinding the ingredients. Always use a clean mortar; always powder each chemical separately; when mixing, dump the required portions on a sheet of dry paper and use a wooden spatula, or gently rock the contents of the paper back and forth. Although the author is only fifteen years old he has been making fireworks for years and has not yet had one of them go off accidentally. The formulas contained in this article have all been tried and tested, and will be found to work perfectly.

Aerial Maroon To make a mortar, fill a 5″ by 1″ cardboard tube at least 1/8″ thick and to the depth of 1/2″ with plaster of Paris. When dry, punch a hole in the tube large enough to accommodate a salute fuse, just above the plaster.

Two kinds of propellant may be used—either flashlight powder or rifle powder. (See note at end.) To make a shell, use a tube 2″ high with a diameter slightly less than that of the mortar. Seal to the depth of 1/2″ with plaster of Paris, leaving through the plaster a hole large enough to accommodate the type of fuse used in roman candles. When dry, place 1/2″ of flashlight powder in the shell.

To make the flashlight powder: 2 parts potassium perchlorate (NOT potassium chlorate) and 1 part red phosphorus. Fill rest of the shell with plaster of Paris; when this is dry, place it, fuse-end down, on a spoonful of flashlight powder in the mortar. Pack a wadding of paper on the top of the shell.

If you do not wish to prop up the mortar with bricks, paste a cardboard disc on the bottom of the mortar.

American Beauty Bomb Use an 8″ by 1-1/2″ mortar and 5 spoonfuls of flashlight powder propellant.

To make the shell, use a cardboard tube 3-1/2″ high, the diameter slightly less than that of the mortar. Paste a cardboard disc on one end of the shell. Fill the shell with this compound: one part sulphur, 2 parts powdered charcoal, 3 parts strontium chlorate, mixed with shellac to form a paste.

Place the shell in the mortar, sealed end up. Add paper wadding.

Aurora Rocket Fasten with wire an 8″ x 1″ cardboard tube to a wooden stick 48″ long, and fill the tube with plaster of Paris to the depth of 1″; leaving in the plaster of Paris a hole 3/4″ in diameter. Run a fuse through this hole; and pack paper around it to secure the fuse. On top of the plaster of Paris, place the following compound to the depth of 4″: 2 parts of potassium chlorate, 1 part sulphur, 3 parts powdered charcoal, 2 parts powdered emery. Then add plaster of Paris to the depth of 1″ leaving through the middle a fuse hole in which to run a black-powder fuse. Add 1/2″ flashlight powder, then 6 “Star-balls.”

To make the star-balls, mix with shellac, to form small balls, 2 parts potassium chlorate, 1 part sulphur, 1-1/2 parts powdered moth-balls, 1 part powdered iron.

Add 1″ plaster of Paris.

Battle In the Clouds Put flashlight powder propellant to the depth of 1″ in any size mortar. Place on top two rolled-up strings of Chinese firecrackers, and add paper wadding.

Cannonade Shell Into a mortar 18″ x 2″, put 2″ of rifle powder. Use a cardboard tube shell, 8″ high and slightly less in diameter than the mortar. Run a 9″ black powder fuse through the shell, leaving 1″ outside. Put a 1″ plug of plaster of Paris in the bottom of the shell. Add 1″ of flashlight powder; then a 1″ plug of plaster of Paris; another inch of flashlight powder, and so on to the end of the shell. Place the shell, fuse-end down, in the mortar. Fill to the top with paper wadding.

Combination Chainlight Shell Make three cardboard tubes, 2″ long and Y2″ wide. Put a cork in the end of each. Tie them on a string so that they will be twelve inches apart. Fill the first tube with 2 parts of strontium chlorate, 1 part sulphur, 2 parts powdered charcoal. Fill the second tube with powdered charcoal (2 parts), 2 parts barium chlorate, 1 part powdered sulphur. Fill the third tube with 4 parts potassium chlorate, 2 parts sulphur, 2 parts powdered copper, 1-1/2″ parts copper sulphide, 3 parts black copper oxide. Mix each filler with shellac and press into its tube. When they harden, group the tubes in your hand, with the string end up. Place them in a mortar just large enough to accommodate them; pack parachute and string on top of the tubes, and add paper wadding. Use black-powder propellant.

Dragon Rocket Use a mortar with diameter slightly larger than that of a large spool, and a flashlight powder propellant. Paste cardboard over one end of a large spool. Mix 2 parts potassium chlorate, 1 part sulphur, 1 part powdered emery, 2 parts powdered iron with shellac, and press into the spool hole. When dry, place in mortar over 2 spoonfuls of flashlight powder, with the cardboard end up. Add 2″ of paper wadding.

Emerald Bomb Make this like the American Beauty Bomb, but substitute barium chlorate for strontium chlorate.

Flitter Bomb Make like the American Beauty Bomb, except for powdered iron instead of powdered charcoal, and potassium chlorate for strontium chlorate.

Fiery Tail Salutes Make like the American Beauty Bomb, but substitute potassium chlorate for strontium chlorate. Before putting the compound in the shell, place three firecrackers in the bottom of the shell.

Golden-Star Mine Candle Effect As golden-star roman candles are not sold, you will have to make such candles. Use two old roman candle tubes 12″ long, and be sure the interiors of the tubes are clean; fill each tube to the depth of 1/2″ with plaster of Paris. When dry, punch a hole in the side of each tube, just above the plaster of Paris, and insert a salute fuse in each hole. Put 1/2″ of rifle powder in the bottom of each tube, and one golden star on top; pack 1/2″ of filler powder on top of the star. On top of this, pack 1/2″ of rifle powder, add one golden star; then put in another 1/2″ of filler powder, and continue in this manner until you have reached the top of the tubes.

Make the stars in cylinder shape, 1/2″ long, the diameters should be slightly less than the inside of the tubes. Mix the following compound with shellac to form a very thick paste: 2 parts sodium chloride, 1 part napthalene, 4 parts powdered charcoal, 4 parts potassium chlorate.

Filler Powder Mix lightly the following on a sheet of paper: 3 parts potassium chlorate, 2 parts iron (reduced by hydrogen), 1 part sulphur.

(Before filling the tubes burn small samples of the filler powder on an iron plate, to make sure that no residue is left after burning. If there is, vary the quantities of the chemicals in the filler powder until no residue is left.) For mortar, use a cardboard tube 12″ high, 2″ wide. Cut a disc of wood 1/2″ thick, to fit snugly in the bottom of the mortar. Drive 8 tacks through the cardboard tube into the wooden disc, and punch 2 holes opposite each other in the mortar just above the disc. Use strong glue to fasten the roman candles on the outside of the mortar, so that the two fuses will protrude through the two holes in the mortar. Put 2″ of black powder in the mortar, next, 15 golden stars; pack 6″ of paper wadding on this. Cut a piece of film 4-1/2″ long and 1/2″ wide. Glue, with shellac, each end of the film strip over the top of each roman candle.

Bury this mortar half-way in the ground. Light the strip of film exactly in the middle. After the candles have quit shooting, do not approach until the mortar has fired. Do not shoot under a tree or overhead obstruction.

Jewel Mine Make two roman candles as described for the Golden Star Mine, only using the following 12 stars in each candle. To make all the stars, mix the compound with gum arabic in water to form a paste.

First Star: 3 parts potassium chlorate, 1 part sulphur, 3-1/2 parts powdered charcoal.

Second Star: 3 parts potassium chlorate, 1 part sulphur, 3 parts powdered iron.

Third Star: 3 parts potassium chlorate, 1 part sulphur, 2 parts powdered antimony, 2 parts powdered arsenic.

Four Star: 3 parts potassium chlorate, 1 part sulphur, 2 parts sodium chloride, 1 part sodium nitrate.

Fifth Star: 3 parts potassium chlorate, 1 part sulphur, 2 parts powdered indigo.

Sixth Star: 3 parts strontium chlorate, 1 part Sulphur, 2 parts powdered charcoal.

Seventh Star: 3 parts potassium chlorate, 1 part sulphur, 1 part barium nitrate, 1 part barium hydroxide.

Eighth Star: 3 parts barium chlorate, 1 part sulphur, 2 parts powdered charcoal.

Ninth Star: 3 parts potassium chlorate, 1 part sulphur, 2 parts black copper oxide.

Tenth Star: 3 parts potassium chlorate, 1 part sulphur, 2 parts powdered copper.

Eleventh Star: 3 parts potassium chlorate, 1 part sulphur, 1-1/2 parts powdered copper, 1-1/2 parts copper sulphide.

Twelfth Star: 3 parts potassium chlorate, 1 part sulphur, 2 parts lime.

Substitute one of each of these stars in the mortar, in place of the Golden Stars.

Iris Bomb Obtain a mortar 12″ high and 1-1/2″ wide. Put 1-1/2″ of rifle powder in the bottom, and on this 12 stars, 6 of Composition A and 6 of Composition B. Composition A: Mix with shellac to form a paste, 3 parts potassium chlorate, 1 part sulphur, 2 parts powdered copper. Composition B: Mix with shellac to form a paste, 3 parts potassium chlorate, 1 part sulphur, 2 parts powdered aluminum. On top of the stars, pack 5″ of paper wadding.

Magnesium Bomb Use a mortar 12″ high and 2″ wide. Fill to the depth of 11/2″ with flashlight powder. On this place the following shell: Fill a cardboard tube size 1″ x 3″ with the following: 1 part sulphur, 3 parts potassium chlorate, 2 parts magnesium (size of confetti), 2 parts gum arabic. Moisten with water and press into the tube. Paint, with ordinary house paint, over one end of the tube; and place the painted end up in the mortar. Pack in 3″ of paper wadding.

National Color Bomb Drill three holes, 1″ in depth and 1″ in diameter, in a “two by four” 12″ long. One hole should be 2″ from one end; another 2″ from the other end, and the third hole in the middle. Fill to the depth of 1″, with plaster of Paris, three cardboard tubes 12″ high and 1″ wide. When dry place tubes, plaster of Paris-end down, in the three holes. Punch two holes opposite each other, just above the plaster of Paris in each tube. Run a continuous black powder fuse through all holes except the last, and plug this with a match stem. Put 1/2″ of rifle powder in the bottom of each tube. In tube 1, place a red star, in tube 2 a white star, and in the other tube place a blue star. On top of each star place 1″ of paper wadding. (Directions for making stars under Jewel Mine.) Parachute Bomb (Apple Green) Make a mortar 12″ high with a diameter slightly larger than a 1-ounce pill can, remove lid and tie a small green parachute to the bottom of the can. Fill the can with this compound: 4 parts potassium chlorate, 1 part sulphur, 3 parts barium hydroxide, 2 parts barium nitrate, 2 parts gum arabic. Moisten with water and press into can. When dry, place can, open end down in mortar. Pack parachute on top of can. Pack 3″ of paper wadding on top of this. Be sure to fire this in open country.

Sapphire Bomb Like Magnesium Bomb, but substituting lycopodium for chips of magnesium.

Serpent Mine Use 24 empty .22 caliber cartridges, long-rifle. Moisten black powder and gum Arabic and press into the cartridges. Substitute the cartridges for the stars in the Golden Star Mine.

Serpent Shell Like Aerial Maroon, but substitute the cartridges, as in Serpent Mine, for half the powder in the Aerial Maroon shell.

Shooting Star Rocket Like Aurora Rocket, but substitute varied colored stars as described for Jewel Mine in place of the fire balls of Aurora.

Geysers Make a sharp-pointed wooden cone, with a base 1-1/2″ in diameter. Obtain a very thick-walled cardboard tube, 2″ in diameter and 1 foot long, and cut 4 cardboard discs that will fit over the end of the tube. Glue 2 of these discs together, and glue this on one end of the tube; then glue the wooden cone on this. Stick the pointed wooden cone in the ground. Put a firecracker in the bottom of the tube, and cover with 1″ of rifle powder. On top of this put 1-1/2″ of the following compound: 2 parts potassium chlorate,1-1/2 parts lithium nitrate, 1 part sulphur, 1-1/2 parts powdered charcoal. Then fill the rest of the geyser with the following compound: 3 parts potassium chlorate, 2 parts iron (reduced by hydrogen), 1 part sulphur. Glue together the other two cardboard discs; punch a hole 1/2″ in diameter in the center and glue this on the end of the geyser. Be sure the powder comes right up to the hole. Cut a piece of friction tape, 1″ square, and stick this over the hole. To fire, pull off the tape, light the powder at long range, and step back quickly.

Hanging Chain Rocket Make a rocket as described in the Aurora Rocket; but leave out the “Star-balls” and substitute parachute and lights as described for the Combination Chain Light Shell. In order to fire all the rockets, bury a narrow bottle up to its neck in the ground and place the end of the rocket stick in this. Never shoot the rockets described in this article at an angle.

Parachute Bomb (Silver Flare) Make like above, but with this compound: 3 parts potassium chlorate, 2 parts powdered magnesium, 1 part sulphur.

Parachute Rocket (Red Star) Same as Aurora Rocket but substitute for the golden star-balls the following: 3 parts strontium chlorate, 1 part sulphur, 2 parts powdered charcoal.

Parachute Rocket Special Effect Make exactly like Aurora Rocket except for star-balls. In place of them, use a cardboard tube 3″ long and 3/4″ wide. Fill to the depth of 1/2″ with plaster of Paris. Punch a hole 1/4″ in diameter just above the plaster of Paris, and fill the hole with a mixture of black powder and shellac. When this is dry, fill the tube to the depth of 2″ with the following compound: 3 parts powdered iron, 2 parts sulphur, 5 parts potassium chlorate. Fill the rest of the tube with plaster of Paris. Tie a string around the middle of the tube. Attach string to a small parachute. Place tube, hole-end down, in rocket, pack parachute on top of tube, and put a cork in the end of the rocket.

Ruby Bomb Like as Magnesium Bomb but with strontium chlorate instead of potassium chlorate.

Reporting Star Mine Use a heavy cardboard tube, 1″ wide and 48″ long. Fill to the depth of 1-1/2″ with plaster of Paris. When dry, put 1″ of rifle powder in the tube. Place one reporting star (see below), with open end down on this. Add 1-1/2″ of filler powder. Place 1″ of rifle powder on this and one reporting star and 1-1/2″” of filler powder. Continue in this manner to the top of the tube.

How To Make Reporting Stars Use a cardboard tube 1/2″ in diameter and 2″ long. Cover a baby Chinese firecracker with glue, and place fuse-end down in tube. Fill the space around the firecracker with plaster of Paris. Fill the space above the firecracker with a mixture of black powder and gum arabic, slightly moistened with water.

(NOTE—Since the above was put in type, Mr. Stewart has added other information, as follows: “The ‘rifle’ powder I use is taken from 16-gauge shotgun shells; it is smokeless and burns rapidly. The pasteboard tubes are about 0.2″ thick, but exactness is not important. They come from packages, etc.; the best are those upon which oilcloth comes rolled. Reduce the quantity of potassium chlorate in the filler powder if it leaves a gummy residue; too much iron may do so also. I do not advise shooting up more than a 1-1/2″ snuff can full of powder; a larger can may be still burning when it lands. I find that gum arabic and water is better than shellac for stars, etc. A good quick burning fuse is made by dissolving 2 oz. of potassium chlorate in 150 cc. of boiling water, and soaking 1/2″ strips of blotting paper in this; then dry. For the apple-green parachute bomb, use ‘rifle’ powder or this; 3 parts potassium chlorate, 2 parts charcoal, 1 part sulphur”)

Maybe Einstein Uses a “Four-Dimensional” Language
Your magazine is tops with me because of the way it takes scientific topics and projects and makes them accessible and understandable to the layman. It would be tragic if the layman were forced to gather all his scientific knowledge by deciphering the language of the scientist of today. Even the average college professor cannot fully comprehend the following words of Einstein: “The empirical quantum of the gravitational equation bridges the corpuscles of the material eschatology by subliminal energy evolved counterclockwise out of analogous infinities.” More power to the editor!—S.A.S., Moorhead, Minn.

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How To Win At Science Fairs

by Ronald Benrey

YOU CAN WIN at a Science Fair as long as one thing interests you more than winning does. This is your project itself. It is going to be judged on scientific thought, creative ability, and presentation. You will really have to know the field your project is concerned with. This takes effort. Since you lack the means of a professional laboratory, you will have to do much with little. This takes trial and error and just plain work. Your presentation must be attractive and clear. This means good workmanship, which takes time and care. You are going to have to show some originality. After all, there is no use doing what everybody else is doing: be different. For this, you have to have the other three under control. By the way, the “laymen” who see your exhibit will ask all kinds of questions. Have good answers at your fingertips. The judges won’t be laymen, and any double-talk will scream to them that you don’t know your subject. It may also make them suspect that the best parts of your project are not your work. This would be unjust, perhaps, but deadly. Now, whether your entry covers a large table top or can just be tucked under your arm, it is going to be a big job. It can’t be left for a “crash program” in the last few weeks before the Fair. It is going to eat up big portions of your time, energy, and spending money for the next several months. All this demands your interest. But it isn’t simply a matter of “fun. ” Licking this challenge may be a turning point in your life. With or without a scholarship prize, your career may begin with it.

Planning

As a reader of Electronics Illustrated your project will probably deal with electronics or applied physics rather than with biological or earth sciences. Select your topic carefully from a broad subject that really interests you. A massive effort in the direction of a passing fancy will result in a mediocre project at best. Take a limited subtopic that you think worth investigating and that you feel able to handle.

To ease financial strain, plan now to build your project over a long period of time, say six months, on a pay-as-you-build basis.

Once you have a rough idea of your project’s general form, don’t dash into construction.

Visit technical libraries and learn all you can about current professional work in the field, and its technical jargon. This will give you much important information and helpful hints, and when you finally face the judges, you will know your subject.

Ability

Here is a prickly question. It is up to you to be realistic and honest with yourself when you choose a topic. Your science teachers and advisers will certainly be helpful, but the final decision must be yours. In other words, if you have never handled a soldering iron before, don’t take on a project requiring elaborate electronic instrumentation. If you have enough time you can work up to a complex project by building a few simpler devices, like many described in EI. This is another reason for starting NOW. – Why not get your feet wet by assembling some test equipment from kits? You will certainly need a multimeter anyway, for any project, and it will be something you can use “forever. ”

Originality

Another touchy subject: discussion of this often scares off good potential science fairers. Nobody requires or expects a science fair project to produce a radical new scientific discovery. However, this does not imply that an entrant can’t find a new angle on an old problem. Merely duplicating a project described in a magazine shows the judges only one thing: the builder can follow directions. The main benefit of entering a science fair is the challenge of thinking a real problem out, all the way through. Your project can be for “demonstration” rather than “research, ” but make sure you come up with fresh, clear, meaningful ways to present your material. Stay away from last year’s winning project: it was good last year. Avoid “staples” (like Tesla coils) unless they are only part of a ‘wider original project.

Construction

Your project should be well presented and look impressive, but impressive need not mean expensive. Judges seldom look twice at an exhibit loaded down with excess and borrowed equipment when the same results could have been obtained more economically and without false show. Novel use of common materials shows creative ability, and this is an important judging criterion. Remember, how you solved your problem is what counts at a science fair, and not merely that you solved it. Also, neatness counts! Aside from being impossible to troubleshoot, a rat’s nest of wiring is typical of losing projects. Time spent color-coding leads, installing wire harness and cable clamps will result in a much more attractive and more reliable project. But know what you are doing! Don’t harness leads in a circuit that demands point-to-point wiring, or cable grid and plate leads together in an amplifier circuit. Read up on layout and construction techniques, and allow yourself time to make and correct mistakes. Prior planning will also pay off in dollars and cents, since you can save by purchasing some components (like resistors) in quantity, and if you live near a big city you can shop around for some items in the military surplus stores, modifying your design if necessary to take odd-value components. Now, sit back and start your thinking. The time to start is right now.

IS YOUR WINNING PROJECT HERE?

RADIO TELESCOPE: Home-built sensitive low-noise receiver, simple antenna system. Try to make simple “radio map.”

GUIDANCE SYSTEM: For model ear. Can be programmed to run around science fair grounds without hitting anything, or to reach pre-chosen destination.

SOLAR CELLS: Home-built unit as part of demonstration of basic physics of solar cells: display on recent professional research results: off-beat practical applications (eyeglass type hearing aid?).

MOON MOUSE: “To be landed on the Moon. ” Self-propelled, radio controlled from Earth, instrumented and transmitter equipped. Some functions solar powered ?

These are only suggestions. You may come up with ideas regarding fuel cells, space communications, navigation, etc.

Related posts

• Your High School CAN Produce Science Fair Winners (Dec, 1960)

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IF Atomic Fuel Were Shared…

The world would be healthier, wealthier and wiser, say AEC scientists, discussing President’s daring proposal to United Nations.

editor’s note: President Eisenhower’s dramatic proposal to the United A at ions that a world pool of fissionable materials he created for peaceful purposes had no greater appeal to any hearts and minds than those of nuclear scientists. Popular Science Monthly invited some of them, on the staff of the Atomic Energy-Commission’s labs at Brookhaven, N. Y., to tell yon what they think of the plan’s potentialities. Their discussion, recorded on magnetic tape, is transcribed here. The various speakers are: William A. Higinbotham, Harry Palevsky, Drs. Clarke Williams, Marvin Fox and Charles P. Baker, physicists; Mrs. Beth Baker, a chemist; and Wesley S. Griswold, of PSM’s editorial staff.

MR. GRISWOLD: What do you people think of the President’s plan to pool fissionable materials for peaceful uses?

Dr. Fox: I think it’s brilliant—a stroke of genius to solve this whole dilemma that has confronted us for the last half-dozen years.

Mr. Palevsky: It provides a central focal point that serves a very necessary purpose. It starts us off.

Dr. Baker: The Acheson-Lilienthal proposal, in 1946, was a brilliant proposal, but in order to get anywhere, you have to start. And with that proposal you had to start by taking off all your clothes and jumping in. Whereas in Eisenhower’s proposal, you say, “Take off your coat, loosen your tie, and sit down. ” There are many people who will do this that wont go the whole way.

Griswold: If you were given the task of setting up such a pool, would you anticipate getting large amounts of fissionable materials, or small amounts? Mr. Higinbotham: The fact is that no countries except Russia and the U. S. (which are well stocked) and England and Canada have the capital to buy—or, as a matter of fact, have access to—a substantial amount of source materials.

You see. thorium is useless until you’ve gone a long way with uranium and its products. And the U. S.. Great Britain and Canada have virtually cornered the free-world market in uranium.

Palevsky: So the three of us and Russia control all the source materials, except for truly trivial quantities.

Higinbotham: The U. S. and Russia control a lot of materials, but they don’t own them. I think the first step is to get these two major parties to loosen up on their controls, so that other people can play around.

I’m thinking of natural uranium and thorium ores—source material.

Griswold: You think, then, that it would be ores that would be contributed to this pool, and not enriched stuff?

Higinbotham: Yes.

Grisuold: How would you ship the materials to the pool?

Higinbotham: I suspect that you are thinking of this pool as a big concrete building somewhere, loaded with radioactive stuff. It seems to me that what Eisenhower contemplates will be a holding company, like the AEC. The stuff will be stockpiled all over the world. It will go by the pound or the truckload or the shipload direct from the donor to research laboratories in different countries all over the world.

Griswold: Is it dangerous to ship? Would it require shielding?

Fox: Not in ore form.

Griswold: What does the stuff look like?

Fox: Well, uranium is shiny silver when freshly made but tarnishes to brown or black quickly when it’s exposed to the air.

Griswold: I’ve heard that it can be obtained in fairly small ingots, almost the size of flashlight batteries.

Fox: You can get it in any size you like.

Griswold: What countries besides the ones you have already mentioned would be likely to have surplus fissionable materials for the world pool?

Baker: I think you should include the Belgian Congo, South Africa and Czechoslovakia—if you can distinguish that country from Russia.

Higinbotham: You’d also include India and Brazil, wouldn’t you?

Baker: Oh, yes.

Higinbotham: India and Brazil would most assuredly be interested in the power potentialities of a world atomic pool. Brazil is peculiarly poor in water resources. The waterfalls are a long way from the coast. The Amazon is flat for many, many miles inland. I think the Brazilians are working small streams mostly.

As a result, Rio and Sao Paulo, the two biggest cities—about 200 miles apart with decidedly mountainous country between—have a common power supply. And they are so hard up for electricity that the different sections of the cities are shut down in succession.

Griswold: Is it possible that we can have smaller atomic power plants than any yet built—plants that could be used, say, to run planes and trains?

Fox: Oh, yes.

Dr. Williams: Especially Russian trains, which are broader gauge. [Laughter. ] Griswold: But not small enough to run automobiles?

Higinbotham: Well, the only possibility in this line is that someone might design a really good battery that you could have charged at an atomic power station, and then run your car by electricity.

Baker: There are other ways. If you had cheap power you could store it chemically by taking water and carbon dioxide and making gasoline out of them, then pouring the gasoline into your car. [Laughter. ] Well, if you had cheap power, you could do this.

Palevsky: That’s true. If you can make cheap power, there are just unlimited processes that could be developed.

If you can reduce the cost of power by, say, 20 or 30 percent, I think that many new industrial processes would just spring up overnight. They will then be feasible.

Griswold: How could atomic power be useful in barren lands—like Arabia or the Australian desert?

Palevsky: Why, in making fertilizer. You need power to make fertilizer.

Griswold: Yes, but what about water?

Water would still be the essential ingredient, wouldn’t it?

Baker: If you have the energy, you can demineralize sea water. If you have the energy, you can also pump it as far as yon like, if you’re willing to pay for it.

It’s not a matter of discovering any fundamentally new principle. It’s a matter of getting the science, the technology and the economics together.

Palevsky: Even in those desert regions, I think if you go down far enough, you get water. It just happens to be uneconomical to pump it now. But cheap power from atomic energy would easily make the pumping job feasible.

Griswold: Have we yet come up with any practical atomic explosive for changing the course of rivers, or for changing the course of hurricanes or tornadoes?

Mrs. Baker: Well, you’d pollute your rivers, for one thing.

Palevsky: And if you dropped an atomic bomb into the eye of a tornado, you’d scatter lethal radioactivity all over the countryside.

Baker: The Eastman Kodak Company would certainly be unhappy. [Laughter. ] Griswold: If the proposed atomic pool is going to exist in several different places, scattered throughout the world, how can it feasibly be guarded?

Higinbotham: First, is it worth guarding? Probably all the material contemplated for the pool will not be enough to make a single atomic bomb. And when the atomic bombs in the world already are counted in the hundreds or the thousands, material that could possibly make one more is not really important.

Griswold: Isn’t it true that, with the right kind of reactor and the necessary raw material, in the course of making atomic power you also make plutonium?

Higinbotham: Yes, but it isn’t until you have really big power plants that the amount of plutonium you are going to produce in a year will be significant.

Baker: Besides, in order to make this plutonium useful, you would have to run your plant in a particular way and it would involve certainly an equivalent plant to extract the plutonium. In other words, if you went and looked at the power plant, you wouldn’t need to be a detective to tell if people were Africa, and now had plutonium, where would you send the plutonium?

Baker: Send some back to South Africa, so that they can start their power plant.

That is, I would think that if the pool delivers uranium to somebody and they use it in a power plant, and use the power for their benefit, then the plutonium which they make incidentally should, of a certainty, belong to the pool and might be sent to help make a quart of milk for every Hottentot, or whatever else seems to be a worthy undertaking.

Mrs. Baker: Essentially, then, you could just rent the material, and then pay it back to the lender.

Higinbotham: It would be ideal if, when we allow another nation to take from the international pool certain material that had been allocated to us, we would also permit that nation’s scientists to visit our laboratories, see our reactors, learn our techniques. Some of our scientists, too, would be expected to go to those countries and help them get started on their research—let them in on our know-how.

Williams: The information is fully as important as the materials, if not more so.

Higinbotham: This proposal of Eisenhower’s really will be something that will be awfully hard for the Russians to turn down.

If you can get a start at talking on a practical level about these problems of the exchange of information and people and cooperation, there will certainly be an entirely different atmosphere from the one we’re presently living in.

And one could hope that out of these discussions would come something at least as attractive as the Eisenhower proposal, and that this would be the beginning of breaking down the iron curtains that exist not only around Russia but around a good many of the rest of us, too. end

Related posts

• The Truth About… Our Weather and the A-Bomb (Mar, 1954)
• These Dogs Are Really “Hot” (Mar, 1954)
• A-POWERED TRAINS IN GLASS TUBES (Mar, 1954)
• What does Atomic Energy really mean to you? (Mar, 1954)
• Splitting the Atom (Mar, 1954)

Science Will Not Destroy Man—But Ignorance May

The fear of war, the fear of atomic bombs and the fear of science have in many minds blended into one. This is dangerous confusion.

Power may destroy civilization. Engines and chemicals may. Even materialism may do so. But none of these is science. Altogether, they are only the first returns from man’s study of nature; little more than a good beginning. If they destroy mankind it will be because man has not learned enough of nature. He must learn more quickly, especially of human nature. As Alexander Pope wrote long ago: “A little learning is a dangerous thing. ” Man is in danger from too little knowledge, not from too much. Science is yet too young.

But repeatedly it is said, in pulpits and in the press, that it is science that is responsible for the present state of the world. In a recent book. Of Flight and Life, Charles A. Lindbergh has cried such despair.

Once he loved his gleaming plane that carried him across the Atlantic. Once he worshipped the power of engines and lived in the faith that this power would bring heaven to earth. Now he is sickened by the destruction that it has wrought, and is fearful of more power in the future. So are we all. But when he confuses power with science and science with materialism—when he states that the “worship of science” brought on two world wars and will bring another—he shows that he knows only the engines of power, and that he does not know science.

For Charles Lindbergh, too, a little science is a dangerous thing.

We of the United States do know power; we know how to use it for the common good. Internationally, we lack no “moral sense. ” We have proved that by offering to give the tremendous power of atomic knowledge to the world, freely, provided only that we have real assurance that that power will not be used against us.

The American people are confident that the power they have attained through science can be used for human good. But in Russia now. as in Germany ten years ago. the lust for power overrules all else.

Hitler began World War II because he worshipped power, not science. Among his first victims were the German universities. He liquidated all science except military research. The Nazi racial doctrines were thoroughly anti-scientific. The Nazi rulers seized the brute power of science, destroyed all else—and were themselves destroyed by their ignorance. Now Russia, too, denies science in her absurd regimentation of scientific research and scientific opinion. A science that trims its views and aims under political pressure is ruled by ignorance. It is not science.

Science Is An Infant Science is far bigger than the study of materials and of energy. True, the material and mechanical products now loom large. They are the outstanding results of science up to now. But the science of today is an infant, still largely occupied with the fundamentals of chemistry and physics. Beyond these, and developing rapidly, are biochemistry, physiology, medicine. Waiting for these biological sciences, in turn, are the study of nerve action and the brain, the sciences of psychology and psychiatry. And only when there is a sound- science of human behavior can there be understanding of the behavior of groups, societies and nations.

In medieval days, it was quite proper and safe to study the stars and the rocks, thus to learn eventually of molecules, atoms and electrons. But it was forbidden, it was a blasphemy to dissect a human body after death and to study its structure and functions. Throughout the centuries, millions of persons died young, for lack of a science of medicine. Thousands were cruelly tortured merely for being ill. Wise and pious men thought the ill were “possessed of devils. ” Meanwhile, other thousands lived a hellish life because their minds were sick. No one dreamed that science could help those of ill mind.

It is only now, indeed, that the world is beginning to understand that mental illness is as innocent as physical illness. Only now are alcoholism and delinquency passing from the “moral” into the scientific sphere, with far better prospect of cure. But as yet there isn’t even a theory to account for the mass psychosis that nations acquire.

The great questions of ten years ago were psychological and social: What makes Hitler that way? And how does he get away with it?

They still are unanswered, and are even more urgent, what with Stalin replacing Hitler. And there are no answers because the biological, human and social sciences were delayed by so many centuries. So humanity faces a crisis in which the use of inanimate power far exceeds the ability to understand human beings and nations, to say nothing of educating and controlling them.

Plainly, the world needs more science, needs to speed the development of science into the mental, human and social fields. There is no time to lose, lest our ignorance, our lack of a mature science, destroy the race.

—Gerald Wendt

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FUN with the HALOGENS

HOME EXPERIMENTS WITH A FAMOUS CHEMICAL FAMILY

By RAYMOND B. WAILES

WHENEVER the members of the halogen family put on an act, you can be sure there will be something doing in the way of entertainment. The nimblest of the family quartet undoubtedly is chlorine. You have seen this actor in several roles before—bleaching dyes, and attacking metals with accompanying pyrotechnics, for example—if you have followed this series of articles. Iodine has made a personal appearance before you as a chemical detective, revealing latent fingerprints on paper. Another member of the family, fluorine, has shown you its remarkable power of etching glass when teamed with hydrogen. The remaining member of the quartet, bromine, is an irritating, rascally sort of character if encountered alone. However, when handcuffed to hydrogen, its behavior is so satisfactory that you should let it enter your home chemical laboratory and allow it to perform for you.

Uniting bromine with hydrogen yields hydrogen bromide, or hydrobromic acid—just as chlorine and hydrogen form hydrogen chloride, or hydrochloric acid. Hydrobromic acid reacts with substances to form bromides, as does its better-known relative, hydrochloric acid, to form chlorides.

Unlike most acids or acid-forming gases, however, hydrogen bromide cannot be prepared for practical purposes by heating corresponding salts with strong sulfuric acid. It is formed in the reaction, to be sure, but it is rapidly decomposed by the oxidizing action of the sulphuric acid. This difficulty is overcome by heating a bromide with strong phosphoric acid, which does not decompose the product.

To make hydrogen bromide, place a half ounce of potassium bromide or sodium bromide in an Erlenmeyer flask or a retort, with a capacity of sixty to 200 cubic centimeters (two to seven fluid ounces). Cover the chemical to a depth of an eighth of an inch or so with strong phosphoric acid, which you can buy at any drug store under the name of eighty-five-percent, or sirupy, phosphoric acid.

Arrange tubing to lead from the flask or retort to the bottom of an empty side-necked test tube, which will serve as a catch bottle to condense water vapor distilled from the phosphoric acid. At the test tube’s side neck, attach more tubing that will conduct the hydrogen bromide vapor to the bottom of a test tube for collecting the gas. This test tube may be left open, and the gas, being heavier than air, will displace it and fill the tube.

Apply heat to the flask or retort, with a Bunsen burner, and hydrogen bromide gas will be generated. It will pass through the system into the last test tube. Meanwhile a teaspoonful or so of useless condensate will collect in the side-necked test tube.

Collect a tubeful of hydrogen bromide gas and then pour it, as if it were water, into the air. A white cloud forms as the gas combines with moisture in the air.

Hold an object moistened with ammonium hydroxide (household ammonia may be used) in the stream of hydrogen bromide gas from your apparatus. Dense white clouds of ammonium bromide will be formed. This resembles the formation of similar clouds of ammonium chloride, when hydrogen chloride (hydrochloric acid gas) comes in contact with ammonia.

If hydrogen bromide is heated, it decomposes into its constituents, hydrogen and bromine. To show this, soak a sheet of filter paper in an alcoholic solution of fluorescein, and dry it. Then dampen the yellow-stained paper with water and wad it into the mouth of a test tube filled with hydrogen bromide gas. Hold the test tube in a Bunsen flame. The heat will release free bromine, which will change the hue of the paper to a reddish coloration. The bromine reacts with the fluorescein to form eosin, a red dye. This test for free bromine can also be adapted to tell whether a salt is a bromide. Usually it is sufficient to heat the salt with strong sulphuric acid, in a test tube plugged with the fluorescein test paper as before. If the salt is a bromide, hydrogen bromide will be formed and the sulphuric acid will decompose it, releasing free bromine and turning the paper pink or red.

Close a test tube of hydrogen bromide gas with your thumb, invert it, and open it under water. As the gas dissolves, water will rise in the tube. The solution of hydrogen bromide in water is known as hydrobromic acid—just as hydrogen chloride, dissolving in water, forms hydrochloric acid. So soluble is ¦ hydrogen bromide gas that 612 volumes of it can be dissolved in one volume of water.

To make hydrobromic acid solution for your tests, you could simply let the gas from your apparatus bubble through water in a test tube. A better way, however, is to fit a distilling flask to the side-necked test tube by means of a cork attached to the side neck. The distilling flask should contain about ten cubic centimeters (three teaspoonfuls) of water, and its arm, pointing downward, should dip into the same quantity of water in a test tube, as shown in the illustration. Hydrogen bromide gas from your apparatus first passes into the bulb of the distilling flask, where the water greedily absorbs it. Any gas not recovered here will dissolve in the water-filled test tube below. After letting the gas bubble through the system for several minutes, disconnect the distilling flask, and combine the solutions that the distilling flask and test tube contain.

This solution of hydrobromic acid, you will find, has distinctly acid properties. In fact, it is strong enough to dissolve metals such as zinc and magnesium. Drop small quantities of these metals into portions of the liquid, and hydrogen gas will be evolved. The metal itself is converted into a bromide salt.

Hydroxides of the various metals are easily dissolved by hydrobromic acid. You can make some copper hydroxide for this test by adding a small amount of ammonium hydroxide to a clear solution of copper sulphate, and filtering to recover the resulting precipitate. This solid residue of copper hydroxide will readily dissolve when you pour some of your hydrobromic acid solution upon it.

With iodine, another member of the halogen family, you can carry out a mysterious and spectacular experiment. This test calls for solid iodine crystals (not the liquid “tincture of iodine” used as an antiseptic, which is a solution of the crystals in alcohol) and should be performed outdoors.

Mix a quantity of the iodine crystals with about twice their volume of metallic aluminum powder, such as is used in aluminum paint, by thorough stirring in a bone-dry porcelain crucible or tin-can lid. So far, no reaction has taken place. Now add a drop of water to the mixture. In several seconds, when the water wets the aluminum metal, things commence to happen.

The iodine-aluminum mixture becomes warm. Suddenly it glows with a soft, red hue. Purple fumes of iodine vapor issue from the mass. (It is to dissipate these fumes that the experiment is performed outdoors.) While the vapor is being emitted, the mixture will continue to glow. Then, as it starts to cool, the dying glow of the aluminum oxide—formed when the aluminum burns in the air—is spontaneously rekindled to brightness. This phenomenon is known as “recalescence.” Finally a cold, twisted residue is left.

Curiously, the drop of water took no chemical part in the reaction; it simply acted as a catalyst or “trigger” to set things going. No one seems to know just how or why a catalyst works. But in some mysterious way it makes certain chemicals interact, simply by its presence.

Here is an experiment with another compound of the halogen family—a hypochlorite —which shows that two catalysts are sometimes better than one.

For the hypochlorite used in this test, you can make a solution of calcium hypochlorite by dissolving (Continued on page 230) about ten grams (two teaspoonfuls) of bleaching powder in 100 cubic centimeters (three and a half fluid ounces) of water, and filtering to obtain a clear solution. Or you can use the straight, undiluted solution of sodium hypochlorite sold under various trade names at drug and grocery stores, for bleaching and for whitening clothes.

Half fill three test tubes with either of these hypochlorite solutions. To one tube, add about five cubic centimeters (a teaspoonful and a half) of a dilute solution of copper sulphate. To the second tube, add some ferrous (iron) sulphate. To the third tube, add five cubic centimeters of copper sulphate solution and an equal quantity of ferrous sulphate solution. Shake each tube and let them stand.

Soon you will see gas bubbles forming in the third tube, containing both copper sulphate and iron sulphate, although there will be practically no evolution of gas in the two other tubes. The gas is formed by the decomposition of the hypochlorite solution. Insert a glowing straw in the third test tube, and it will flare up and burn with a vivid light, showing that the gas is oxygen. Here is an instance in which two substances, neither of which could be considered a catalyst alone, do a nice bit of teamwork as catalysts when placed together.

Boy Chemist “Eats Up” Course in Foodstuffs

Relationship between the fields of chemistry and cookery is the research project that interests seventeen-year-old Edgar Friedenberg, the youngest man ever to appear on a program of the American Chemical Society. Friedenberg is pictured below taking time off from his studies in synthetic foodstuffs to try a little practical work with the frying pan.

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Spectacular Tests with Rubber Balls and Wax Show

How the Ice Age May Return

By Gaylord Johnson

WHEN we speak of the glacial period, or ice age, we are apt to think of it as over and done with for good—as unlikely to return on earth as the prehistoric dinosaur. When we see scratched and. grooved rocks showing the terrific grinding power of the mile-thick ice sheet that once covered the northern part of our temperate zone, we never think of what might happen to New York, Chicago, Boston, Leningrad, London, and all our other northern cities, if the conditions should return which produced the age of ice in the Northern Hemisphere.

And yet, a very small change in the conditions which determine our climates and seasons could cause a return of the glacial period—and bring the destructive ice fields back into our temperate zone!

It is both easy and interesting to show with a simple experiment how this could happen. To perform it, only the simplest materials are needed. But first let us recall to mind a few facts that will be helpful in understanding the experiment.

First of all, the principal cause of the change from summer to winter, astronomers tell us, is the slant of the earth’s axis to the plane in which the planets revolve around the sun. A glance at a diagram showing how the axis slants toward the sun in summer, and away from it in winter, makes it plain that the areas inside the arctic and antarctic circles are alternately deprived entirely of the sun’s heat and light for months at a time.

This accounts for the polar ice caps of our world, and also those of Mars, our nearest neighbor in space, whose axis slants at almost the same angle as ours. Winter at one pole coincides with summer at the other, because the opposite poles are simultaneously exposed to, and sheltered from, the heating rays of the sun.

It is also easy to see that this prolonged cutting off of solar heat causes such an accumulation of ice that not even an entire summer’s exposure to solar rays will remove it. Accordingly, inside the arctic circle, the ice cap is more or less permanent the year round—but, owing to the daily sunshine upon the entire surface outside the arctic zones, the permanent ice cap never extends much beyond this limiting circle.

With this condition borne in mind, let us now set up a simple experiment with two rubber balls of identical size, a couple of steel knitting needles, and a strong electric-light bulb. Our object will be to find out what would happen if we could vary the slant of the earth’s axis, so that a larger portion of the globe was sheltered from the sun’s rays during the winter. For convenience in carrying out our experiment, we shall consider only the Northern Hemisphere. The ball, of course, represents the earth; the strong electric bulb the sun.

We begin our preparations by making holes in the two balls and forcing the knitting needles through them, as near the centers as possible. This done, we melt a couple of cakes of paraffin wax and coat the two balls evenly by rotating them in the liquid wax and allowing the coating to harden.

When each of the balls has an even coating of wax, extending from pole to pole, and about a sixteenth of an inch thick, we are ready to test the effect of varying the slant of the earth-ball’s axis, while it is rotated in the rays of the hot lamp-sun. It is well to use a powerful bulb. I used one rated at 400 watts.

We can be sure that, whatever the slant, the wax will melt and drip off the ball wherever it is exposed to the hot rays of the electric bulb during rotation. We can also confidently expect that where the wax is not exposed to the lamp’s heat during any part of its rotation, there the coating will be left unmelted, just as the ice in the polar regions is left solidly frozen by several months of shelter from the sun’s rays.

In trying this experiment, I bored two holes in a board, at varying slants, to act as “bearings” in which the knitting-needle axes might turn easily, and to keep the wax-covered globes turning before the hot lamp at the same unvarying angles. One hole was bored into the surface of the board at an angle of twenty-three and a half degrees to the vertical; the other at an angle of thirty-five degrees to the vertical. The correct angles were obtained by using a protractor to guide the drill.

To prevent any scattering of the lamp’s rays, I also cut a round hole in a cardboard box, set up as shown. This allowed only a concentrated beam of light to reach the wax-covered ball.

With the apparatus complete as described, let us try the effect of rotating the ball in the hot rays of the lamp, with the knitting-needle axis turning in the hole which was drilled at an angle of twenty-three and one half degrees. This angle, you recall, is the same as that formed by the earth’s axis and the normal to the plane of its revolution around the sun.

As the wax-covered sphere turns slowly in the heat of the lamp, you will find the wax first softening, then melting, and finally dripping off upon the board below. Eventually, in a half-hour or so, depending upon the size and heat of the bulb used, all the wax, with the exception of the shallow cap within the “arctic circle,” which never enters the lamp’s melting light, will be removed.

When all but the “polar” wax has melted from one ball (rotated at the twenty-three and one half-degree angle,) let us take the other ball and rotate it before the lamp at a slant of thirty-five degrees. In a proportionate time, a slow rotation of the ball will melt off all the wax except that in the “polar” area, which is continuously sheltered from the lamp’s heat.

Compare this area of unmelted wax with the polar wax cap left on the ball which was turned at an angle of twenty-three and one-half degrees—and what do you notice? A single glance shows that the wax area on the ball turned at the thirty-five-degree angle is much larger.

If we indicate on both spheres the outline of the American continents, it is apparent that if the earth’s axis actually did slant at an angle of thirty-five degrees, the polar ice might be expected to cover about half of the United States!

If you now glance at the illustration showing how far south the ice of the glacial period is known to have extended, it is very natural to ask whether the ice age may not indeed have been caused by a change in the slant of the earth’s axis.

This supposition is, in fact, the basis of one of the many theories which have been proposed to account for the glacial period. It is called “Drayson’s theory,” after Maj. Gen. A. W. Drayson, the English scientist who first suggested the idea.

Drayson’s theory advances some excellent mathematical reasons for believing that the slant of the earth’s axis is not kept at a constant slant of twenty-three and one-half degrees away from the normal to the plane of its orbit, but gradually increases its inclination until it reaches an angle of thirty-five degrees.

The-effect of this increased slant upon the earth’s climate would then be the same as the effect we produced upon our wax-covered ball by increasing its tilt away from the heat rays of the electric bulb. Just as the size of the polar cap of paraffin grew larger when the ball’s axis was inclined at thirty-five degrees, so the earth’s cap of ice would grow larger when its axis tipped to the same extent,—and the great glaciers would push farther and farther south- ward. The theory thus accounts for what actually occurred—and for what may occur again.

Drayson estimated that the length of time required for this gradual sway of the earth’s axis to take place (from a minimum of twenty-three and one-half degrees to a maximum of thirty-five degrees) is about 15,878 years.

Since our globe’s axis is now nearly at its minimum slant, we can, according to Dray-son’s theory, determine the time of the last glacial period by figuring backward to the last period of maximum inclination.

We are now roughly at the year 2,000 A.D. —or at least we shall be in a single lifetime, a mere nothing in astronomical time intervals. Count backward 15,878 years and you arrive at 13,878 B.C. At this time, says Drayson, the glacial period was in full swing in the Northern Hemisphere, and in the Southern, too, of course.

IN THIS far-away epoch, over 2,000,000 square miles of Europe and 4,000,000 square miles of North America were covered with a great sheet of ice, which was in some places over a mile thick. In New England, the glacier came as far south as Cape Cod, which was actually formed from the rocks and soil pushed ahead of the ice wall. This is also true of the Dongan Hills, on Staten Island, New York City.

The southern edge of the ice extended westward along the border of New York State, across northern Ohio, and as far south as the present site of Indianapolis. In Europe, it covered the British Isles, and parts of Germany and Russia. If Drayson’s theory is correct, we may expect that many future cities of North America and Northern Europe will again be obliterated by the oncoming ice when the next glacial age reaches its peak at about the year. 18,000 A.D.

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• We CAN Control the Weather! (Nov, 1936)
• Carbon Dioxide Causes Global Warming (1932) (Nov, 1936)

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Experiments With Oxygen FOR THE AMATEUR CHEMIST

A few common chemicals supplied by the druggist and simple apparatus is all that is required to produce these interesting experiments with oxygen.

by VERNON TRACEY

OXYGEN experiments form a very interesting field of adventure for the amateur chemist due to the fact that oxygen is one of the most active of the chemical elements. It readily combines with most any other element to form many different compounds. These compounds of oxygen and other elements are known as “oxides” and the process of combination is called “oxidation,” or more commonly known as burning. We see examples of oxidation every day in the burning of fuel, but this is not very active when one considers the fact that the air is only one-fifth oxygen, the rest being mainly nitrogen and a small percentage of other gases.

The amateur chemist can produce pure oxygen by heating a mixture of potassium chlorate—a white powder which can be bought cheaply from any druggist or dealer in chemical supplies, and manganese dioxide—a black powder. The mixture is composed of two parts of potassium chlorate to one part of manganese dioxide and is heated over a bunsen burner or alcohol lamp. The test tube is supported over the flame by a ringstand and the open end of the tube is fitted with a rubber cork. An elbow made from glass tubing is fitted into the cork and a length of rubber tubing leads to a bottle in the pneumatic trough where the gas is collected.

The pneumatic trough consists of a pan fitted with a wooden shelf about an inch from the bottom. The trough is filled with water high enough to come about an inch above the shelf. The shelf has a small hole drilled through it and a medicine dropper or piece of glass tubing drawn to a point and bent to a right angle is fitted into the end of the delivery tube and leads up through the hole in the shelf.

To collect the gas, fill a bottle with water, cover its mouth with a piece of glass, invert it in the pneumatic trough and remove the glass again. The mixture is heated in the test tube and after allowing the gas to bubble up for a few seconds, invert the bottle of water on the shelf over the end of the delivery tube. The gas will bubble up into the bottle and displace the water. After the bottle is full, cover its mouth with a piece of glass and remove it from the shelf. It can be set out on the table if the glass is left over its mouth to prevent the gas from escaping.

Eight grams of the chlorate mixture will make several large bottles of oxygen. After the gas ceases to flow, remove the test tube and allow it to cool, otherwise water will be drawn back through the delivery tube and break the glass. The contents of the test tube —fused potassium chloride and manganese dioxide can be removed by dissolving in water.

In removing the oxygen the potassium chlorate is reduced to potassium chloride but the manganese dioxide which is used as a “catalytic agent” to speed up the reaction undergoes no change itself. If so desired it can be filtered out and used again. A sheet of blotting paper fitted into a funnel will serve as a filter.

Steel wool will flare up and burn with a brilliant light if held in a bottle of oxygen as can be seen in the photo. A wad of it is held with forceps over a bunsen flame until it begins to glow, the cover is removed from the oxygen and the wool is thrust into the bottle where it immediately bursts into flame. Bits of molten steel will fall and spatter on the bottom of the bottle creating the effect of fireworks and care should be taken not to get the face too near the mouth of the bottle. Iron oxide will be deposited on the bottom of the bottle at the end of this experiment.

Oxygen will combine with steel wool however at ordinary temperatures, although much more slowly. To demonstrate this, force a wad of steel wool into a test tube, fill it with water and collect it full of oxygen in the manner just described. Support it over a glass of water on a ringstand so the mouth of the test tube is submerged to a depth of about an inch. Allow it to set all night and upon examination the next day the water will be found to have risen up to a considerable height in the test tube. The steel wool has rusted and is covered with a coat of iron oxide. This shows that the oxygen has combined with the steel wool and left a partial vacuum in the test tube which in turn draws the water up from the glass.

We see examples of iron oxidizing at ordinary temperatures every day but this takes place more slowly than the steel wool did in the pure oxygen. There is just as much heat produced at the end of this slow oxidation as when the wool was burned in the bottle of oxygen; but so slowly that it is dissipated as fast as it is produced.

If, however, this heat given off by slow oxidation cannot escape as fast as it is produced as in the case of a mow of damp hay or a pile of oily rags the heat keeps accumulating until the kindling temperature is reached and the material bursts into flame. This is known as “spontaneous combustion” and is a common cause of fire in farm buildings.

You have no doubt heard the joke about making the match burn twice—well, here’s how to do it: Light a match and allow it to burn for a few seconds. Blow out the flame and if a glowing ember remains on the end, thrust the match into a bottle of oxygen and it will immediately burst into flame again with a slight harmless explosion. This action can be repeated several times until the oxygen becomes used up.

A glowing charcoal dropped into a bottle of oxygen will burn vigorously. Cover the bottle with a glass while the charcoal is burning to collect the carbon dioxide formed. After the burning has ceased, pour about an ounce of lime-water into the bottle and shake. The lime-water will turn milky; this indicates the presence of carbon dioxide.

Similarly if sulphur is burned in oxygen, weak sulphurous acid will be formed. Test with blue litmus paper which turns red on contact with acid.

Chemists who have no gas supply or who wish to heat large flasks will find a one burner electric stove very convenient. Flasks should be supported an inch or so above the heating element by means of a ringstand as shown in the photo. There is little danger of breaking the glass as long as it does not come in direct contact with the red-hot wires.

Ordinary drinking glasses will be found very suitable for collecting small quantities of oxygen. They are easier to handle than test tubes and hold enough oxygen for ordinary tests. In collecting gases in this manner, slide a piece of glass over the mouth of the vessel before withdrawing it from the water to prevent the gas from escaping, as shown in the photo.

Whether he has much knowledge of chemistry or not, the amateur chemist should be interested in the practical use of this gas.

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WE GOT OUR FACE FROM A FISH

Nothing else is of such supreme interest as the gripping and vital story of “Life— The World’s Greatest Mystery.” Here is the second installment of the dramatic history of man’s rise from a mass of floating jelly to the human being he now is. In a most striking manner a famous authority details the amazing facts about the molding of the human face.

What They Talked About: LAST month, Dr. William K. Gregory, world-famous scientist of the American Museum of Natural History, told Michel Mok, staff writer, how the earth and life originated. About two billion years ago the earth was torn out of the sun by the passing of another star. Slowly it condensed and cooled down. A billion years later, chemical forces created tiny bits of living jelly in the primeval puddles.

These developed into colonial cell groups, into small wormlike creatures, into air-breathing fishes. Finally, some ventured out onto dry land.

The Thrilling Story Continues: MR. MOK: Dr. Gregory, you told me in our last talk that the primitive air-breathing fishes that crawled out of the water hundreds of millions of years ago were the ancestors of man. Yet, men don’t look like fishes; at least, most of them don’t. We don’t look like any animal. Where did we get our looks? Where did our face come from?

Dr. Gregory: You got your face from a fish; in fact, you got it from a shark. But before we go further, let me ask you a question. Do you know what a face is?

Mr. Mok: The front part of a head.

Dr. Gregory: That is not entirely correct. The head, you see, consists of the brain case and the face. The forehead is part of the toppiece. Draw a line across your eyebrows over the tops of your ears, and everything under that, to the top of your Adam’s apple, is your face. Most people think the forehead is included. That is not so. If it were true, then the balder a man, the higher his face would extend. But all this does not explain what a face is. So far, we have only decided where it is. Try again.

Mr.’ Mok: Well, I might say that the face is the fortune of some and the misfortune of others.

Dr. Gregory: That answer is scientifically almost right. The face is the fortune of all animals; they literally make their living with it. Among people it is sometimes a misfortune. But that is because we have invented all sorts of new functions for the face.

Mr. Mok: New functions? What are they?

Dr. Gregory: First let’s see what the old or original functions are. The face is two things in one. Primarily, a trap to catch food. Secondly, an instrument board on which are mounted the receiving parts of several instruments of precision, such as the eyes, the ears, the nose. The purpose of these instruments is to take the owner of the face to places where he may find food to catch in his trap, and to warn and take him away from dangerous neighborhoods.

MR. MOK: That is true of animals. But what do we do with them? What did you mean by “new functions”?

Dr. Gregory: We use our faces to catch mates, play poker, make political speeches, and for a number of other things peculiarly human. Since man is the latest species of animal to arrive on earth, these uses are new. Now, if a man’s face is not adapted to one of these uses, he is, as the saying goes, out of luck. That is why it is only among people that the face may be a misfortune. An animal is never out of luck on account of its face. It always serves its purpose, except when severely injured.

Mr. Mok : But why do you say that we got our face from a fish? Last month you told me that we parted company with our cousins, the apes, about ten million years ago. I should imagine that our face came from them.

Dr. Gregory: It did. But it goes much further back than that. Suppose a man inherits a gold watch from his father, who. in turn, had received it from his father, and so on, for several generations back. Wouldn’t it be entirely true to say that the present owner got that watch from his great-great-grandfather?

Mr. Mok: Of course.

DR. GREGORY: Well, we got our face from a fish in somewhat the same way. The difference is this: When you inherit a watch, the entire, ready-made article comes down to you unchanged. In the case of the face, our earliest ancestors left us only the “works,” that is, the ground plan. Each succeeding group of animal ancestors modified it, added touches of their own, or lost some part or other.

Mr. Mok : What were these succeeding groups of our ancient animal ancestors? Dr. Gregory: Briefly, the ape got its face from the early monkey; the monkey from the opossum; the opossum from the lizard, and the lizard from a fish. You can visualize this line of succession best by picturing it as a staircase. You stand on the top step. The ape stands on the first step below you, the monkey on the second step, and so on down. But you must understand that each of the animals I named is the modern representative of great groups of numerous species that lived ages ago.

Mr. Mok : How many years are represented by each of your steps?

Dr. Gregory: The apelike creatures lived from ten to twenty million years ago, the early monkeys from twenty to fifty million years ago, the opossums from fifty to one hundred million years ago, the lizards from one hundred to three hundred million years ago, and the fishes from three to five hundred million years ago. These are not wild guesses. The length of each of these periods was established by the radium clock which I explained to you last month. So, you see, your face is quite an antique.

MR. MOK: I had no idea I owned anything as ancient as that. You mean, then, that the fishes were the first creatures that had faces?

Dr. Gregory: They were the first creatures that had anything resembling a human face. Other, earlier creatures had faces of a sort, but they were not at all like ours. They looked more like the faces of worms.

Mr. Mok: In what way does the face of a man resemble that of a fish?

Dr. Gregory: A man and a fish have the same facial outfit. The same parts are arranged in the same order. In both, the smelling part is in front of the eyes; the eyes are above the jaws; the jaws are below the brain case. The only fundamental difference is that a fish has no external ears.

Mr. Mok : I think that is only a sketchy resemblance.

Dr. Gregory: It would be if that were all. But the resemblance goes much deeper than that. The very same bones in the jaws of the fish that it uses to catch other fishes also serve us to eat it. We have inherited the bones of the tongue and of the throat from the fishes. The muscles that move our jaws and tongues are modifications of those of the fishes. The way our brain is divided into its main sections is the same as that in the fish. Now, have I convinced you that you look like a fish?

MR. MOK: Not completely. But, even granting that a man and a fish do resemble each other, I still don’t see how that proves that the fishes were our ancestors. A man may have a face like the moon; a pretty child may look like a flower. That does not prove any relation, does it?

Dr. Gregory: Of course not. And the reason it does not is that such resemblances don’t exist, except in your imagination. Real resemblance is structural resemblance. Our face and that of the fishes resemble each other in structure. Structural resemblance is evidence of descent. Mr. Mok: Why? Dr. Gregory: Because animals that are known to be related resemble each other in structure. The opposite is also true. Take, for example, the bulldog and the Russian wolfhound. On the surface, they look quite different. Yet, through their structure, the descent of both has been traced to the same wolflike animal.

Mr. Mok: But even if their structures are alike, couldn’t they have been “designed” independently, as it were? A Rolls Royce and a Packard are both automobiles. Their structures resemble each other a good deal. Still, they were built in different factories.

Dr. Gregory: Very true. However, the history of the automobile shows that they are related. They are both modifications of the same crude horseless buggy of forty years ago. Do you see the point?

Mr. Mok: I do. What I don’t see is why you singled out the shark as the particular fish that gave us our face.

Dr. Gregory: Simply because the shark is the least modified survivor of the early vertebrates, or backboned creatures. In other words, the shark has remained in the horseless buggy stage, while man has developed into a modern car. To put it a bit differently, the shark, or dogfish, to this day carries around with it the original ground plan of the human anatomy, including that of the face.

Mr. Mok : Where did the shark get its face?

DR. GREGORY: Probably from some wormlike water creature. We don’t know exactly what kind. There are several theories, but the question is still up in the air. What we do know is that the shark is much closer to us in anatomy and appearance than it is to any of its invertebrate, or backboneless, ancestors.

Mr. Mok: Very flattering—for the shark. But if we developed from the shark, why is it that the old shark is still with us?

Dr. Gregory: The present shark is a descendant of a conservative branch of the shark family. You and I are descendants of a progressive branch. In a way, it is the same situation you observe among people. Let us suppose that one hundred years ago there were two brothers, the sons of a poor night watchman. The older got ahead in the world; the other stayed poor. Today, a descendant of the older brother is the millionaire president of a large corporation, while the great-grandson of the other is still a night watchman. Is that clear?

Mr. Mok: Yes, but what was the cause of the split among animals?

DR. GREGORY: Nobody knows. We do know, however, that in every age of the history of the earth, descendants of the conservative and progressive branches of the same old animal families have lived side by side. Mr. Mok: How do you know? Dr. Gregory: Geologists have found fossils of both kinds in one rock layer; that is, a rock layer formed during a definite period in the history of the earth. All of the rock layers that have been examined, each of them formed during a different period, have yielded such “conservative” and “progressive” fossils. Mr. Mok : Then the shark, you might say, is a fossil that has survived? Dr. Gregory: Exactly. As a matter of fact, we call it a “living fossil.” The opossum is one, too. They are animals that have not progressed in hundreds of millions of years. A little while ago, I compared the shark to the old horseless buggy. But there is a difference. The first automobiles are no longer in use. They are on exhibition in museums, as curiosities. The living fossils, on the other hand, are like horseless buggies that are still running around, side by side with the Rolls Royces and Packards that sprang from them. Do you see now how it is possible that the shark, in a manner of speaking, could develop into man and stay with us at the same time?

Mr. Mok : I see that it could happen, but not how it happened. To come back to the face: how did it develop from the hideous mask of the shark into the human countenance?

Dr. Gregory: To understand that, you must first realize that every feature of the fish’s face is adapted for helping the fish make its living in the water.

Mr. Mok: In what way?

Dr. Gregory: In three ways. First of all, it is streamlined so that it creates a minimum of turbulence in the water and a maximum of ease in slipping through it. Secondly, it is slippery.

Mr. Mok: What makes a fish slippery?

Dr. Gregory: It is covered with a lubricant. This is a mucus, or slime, which the fish itself manufactures. The purpose of this jellylike stuff is to dissolve the tiny parasite water plants and animals that otherwise would fasten themselves onto the fish’s body, like barnacles to the bottom of a ship, and hinder its movements. We owe our own skin, including that on the face, to the inner layers of the fish’s skin.

Mr. Mok : A good thing we picked the inner ones, or we would be covered with scales.

Dr. Gregory: There was nothing else for us to pick, as you put it, for the fishes gradually lost the outer layers of their skin, including the scales, when they crawled out of the water and became land-living animals.

Mr. Mok : You have mentioned two of the features that helped the fishes to make their living in the water. What is the third?

Dr. Gregory: The third is very important. It is their elaborate system of gills, supported by beautifully jointed arches and levers. This enables the fishes to breathe in the water.

Mr. Mok : I know. But where is the connection with human beings? We don’t live in the water, and don’t need gills. We breathe through lungs.

Dr. Gregory : Here is the connection: In our own heads, a part of the remains of this gill system forms the larynx, the box on which our vocal chords are stretched. Another remnant of it is our thyroid. This is the gland, located right under the Adam’s apple, which makes one of the chemicals that regulate our growth. Still other remnants of the gill machinery are our tonsils, and the glands that make the saliva. The larynx, or voice box, is derived from one of the fish’s gill arches. The thyroid, the tonsils, and the salivary glands were originally the pockets of inner skin that form the fish’s gills.

Mr. Mok: Can you prove all this?

Dr. Gregory : Certainly. The proof is this: An unborn baby, in the fourth week of its development, has no larynx, no thyroid, no tonsils, and no salivary glands. Instead, it actually has gill pockets and gill arches, like a fish.

Mr. Mok: What becomes of them?

Dr. Gregory : The gill pockets become the child’s thyroid, his tonsils, and his salivary glands. The gill arches develop into his larynx; the inner, gristly core of the jaws; and the little bones of the middle ear—that is, the part of the ear that transmits sound waves from the outer shell to the inner ear. As a matter of fact, the unborn baby, in its various stages, offers a very much condensed and blurred record of man’s development from the earliest forms. It has, in turn, characteristics of a one-celled creature, a worm, a fish, an amphibian, a lizard, a hairy mammal, a creature with short legs like an ape, and, finally, a man.

Mr. Mok : Why is the record blurred?

Dr. Gregory: Because the unborn baby, in each of these stages, resembles the unborn young of the various animal types, and not the adults. If it resembled the adults, the record would be much clearer.

Mr. Mok : Is there any other evidence of our fish ancestry?

Dr. Gregory: Plenty. In an adult, the heart is separated from the head by the neck. The four-week unborn baby has no neck. Its heart is located right behind the “gills,” as it is in a fish. Another piece of evidence is that we have the remains of a double skull.

Mr. Mok : You mean one head inside the other ?

Dr. Gregory: Yes, but not all the way. Many of the early fishes had a double brain box. The main purpose of the inner box was. to protect the brain and the nervous parts. The outer shell served as a shield against the water and as a base for the muscles. This is still true in many fishes and in some of the lower animals, such as lizards.

Mr. Mok: How about us?

Dr. Gregory: In us (and in the other mammals) the top of the old inner roof has thinned out and is now represented by a membrane, or thin skin, which is the outermost of the three membranes that protect the brain. The base, or floor, of the brain case still is double, and so are the lower parts of the sides of the box, directly inward from the ears.

Mr. Mok: Where did we get our teeth? Did we inherit them, too, from a fish?

Dr. Gregory: We surely did. Every time your best girl flashes you one of her pretty smiles, she displays a legacy from the shark.

Mr. Mok: Our old friend, the shark, again!

Dr. Gregory: We cannot get away from him. He is the ground plan, remember. Now, this shark was a gangster of the worst kind; a robber and a murderer. Naturally, he had thousands of enemies. To protect himself, he wore a coat of mail.- In other words, he was covered with teeth from snout to tail.

Mr. Mok: Real teeth over the entire body?

Dr. Gregory: They were real enough, though most of them were small. They were tiny, flat scales with sharp points, called skin denticles. In the skin around the shark’s mouth, they became larger and gave rise to the teeth.

Mr. Mok : Then the teeth are originally a product of the skin?

Dr. Gregory: Right. They were really enlarged skin denticles. In the beginning, teeth had no sockets. The shark still hasn’t any. Its teeth grow right out of the skin inside its mouth. This skin is rolled around over the edge of the jaws onto the inside of the mouth. The shark has practically an unlimited supply of teeth; the tooth-bearing part of its skin keeps on growing them. When some break off in front, others swing up from the rear, like reserves. The shark probably continues to grow them as long as it lives. In the primitive shark, the teeth were merely piercers to grasp and help kill its prey.

Mr. Mok: It is hard to realize that these murderous prongs developed into our teeth. How did it happen? Dr. Gregory : In later fishes, especially the air-breathing ones, certain parts of the skin that covered the jaws both on the inside and the outside produced bony plates. Bone, you know, is in a sense nothing but hardened skin. To these bony plates the teeth became attached. Later still, the teeth gradually sank into sockets in the bones.

MR. Mok : As I understand it, everything you have told me so far about the face covers its development from the fish’s original food trap.

Dr. Gregory: That is right. Mr. Mok : What of the face as an instrument board? Where, for example, did we get the nose?

Dr. Gregory: Sorry, but I will have to go back to the shark again.

Mr. Mok: I am used to it by now.

Dr. Gregory: The shark had simply two open pockets, one on each side of its face. They contained a membrane folded somewhat in the shape of a rosette. These membranes were sensitive to odors in the water, especially that of dead fish. That was the humble start of the feature that is mainly responsible for the beauty of the face of man, and the beginning of the organ that makes him delight in the fragrance of the rose and of the frying breakfast bacon. The openings of the shark’s nose were on opposite sides of the face because they presumably acted as guides in the creature’s steering.

Mr. Mok : How would the fact that they were on opposite sides help it in steering?

Dr. Gregory: Because by turning so that it gets a whiff in both nostrils, it makes straight for the source of the smell. That is one of the reasons that three of our sense organs—the eyes, the nostrils, and the ears— are arranged in pairs. As I said before, they are the receiving parts of instruments of precision. These instruments are really range finders. Because the receivers are arranged in pairs, they get equal impulses only when the source is directly in front of them. The same principle forms the basis of the seismograph, the apparatus used to detect the direction of an earthquake, and of several other instruments of precision.

Mr. Mok : But we have our nostrils close together.

Dr. Gregory : That started with the mammals. The reason probably was that the eyes superseded the nose as range finders.

Mr. Mok : How did the development come about?

Dr. Gregory: Between its two rather distant nostrils, the shark has a bridge of gristle covered with skin, which completes its streamline contour. This is its snout. The roof of this snout, or false face, corresponds to the bridge of the human nose.

Mr. Mok : Where did we get the rest ?

DR. Gregory: Just a moment. The later fishes had a pair of bony lids instead of the shark’s gristle-bridge. In the mammals, these nasal bones extend nearly to the front end of the snout. When you get home, take a good look at the face of your dog, and you will see that this is so.

Mr. Mok: But where did the tip of the nose come from?

Dr. Gregory: I am coming to that now. In the manlike apes, the nasal bones have become shortened in front. The tip of the nose has begun to form but it is not yet much raised beyond the surface of the face. The wings of the nose are large. As the lips and the sides of the nose drew backward, the tip grew forward and downward. How much it grows downward and forward determines what kind of nose you are going to have—Greek, Roman, or plain pug.

Mr. Mok : In the beginning of our talk, you said that we used our faces to catch mates. It would appear to me that the shape of the nose had a good deal to do with that?

Dr. Gregory: I would not be surprised. But styles in noses, like everything else, change at different times and in different places. Every Australian bushman village may have its own John Barrymore. I believe that our own ancestors of glacier times had faces that were shaped much like those of the Australian bushmen.

Mr. Mok: And what of the lips?

Dr. Gregory: Our remote ancestors, from the air-breathing, lobe-finned fishes to the primitive reptiles, had only a bony mask over their faces. This was covered with tough skin, such as the alligator has today.

Mr. Mok : Please don’t tell me that I owe part of my face to a crocodile!

Dr. Gregory : You do. The reptiles are the inventors of the beginnings of the machinery that gives your face its expression. You see, all the reptiles have a circular band, a muffler you might say, of muscles around their throats. These muscles are under the control of the so-called facial nerve.

Mr. Mok : You don’t mean to say that an alligator expresses its feelings with its neck?

Dr. Gregory: Of course not. Expression came much later. In the early mammals, this muffler of muscles has grown forward over the face and around the eyes, but it has not yet reached the place of the future lips. As these muscles grew forward, they dragged along with them the branchings of the controlling nerve, which spread over the face like a vine.

Mr. Mok: When did the lips appear?

Dr. Gregory : In the regular mammals, such as the horse, the cow, and the dog. This system of muscles and nerve branches reaches a high development in the manlike apes. They are known as the mimetic, or actors’, muscles, because they are the “tools” of the theatrical profession. In all mammals the mimetic muscles and their nerves also extend upward around the ears and scalp. Every one knows how easily animals can move their ears. Among us mortals, only a few gifted individuals have inherited that talent.

Mr. Mok: Did we invent the smile?

Dr. Gregory: No. The great apes laugh, grin, and smile, but their “smile” may mean anger. When they raise their upper lip so that they expose their canine teeth, they are angry. Otherwise, it means laughter. As for the “smiles” on the faces of cats and dogs, I suspect that they do not exist, except in cartoons.

Mr. Mok: Do the apes kiss?

Dr. Gregory: Not exactly. The mother chimpanzee bends over her baby and touches it with the tip of her lower lip. But it is not a completed kiss. The apes use their lips as touch organs to explore things, especially things to eat, and as a funnel through which they suck fruit juices.

Mr. Mok: Where did we get our ears?

Dr. Gregory: The external ear- openings appeared first in the lizards. The outward ear is simply a resonator, or tube, to catch sound vibrations. The lower mammals were the first animals that had it. In the beginning, it was just a fold of skin, supported by gristle. In the higher mammals, it was seized hold of by the mimetic muscles, so that these animals can move their ears in almost any direction. The ear shells of certain apes are so much like ours that you can scarcely distinguish them.

Mr. Mok: And the eyes?

Dr. Gregory : This time I have to go back further than the shark. The first little wormlike creatures had eyes of a sort. They were merely spots of pigment, sensitive to light, that enabled their owners to distinguish between light and darkness. Like teeth, the eyes are originally a product of the skin. In the primitive sea creatures, they may occur in almost any place on the surface of the body, and sometimes in great numbers. The fishes were the first to have eyes somewhat like ours.

Mr. Mok: How do they differ?

DR. Gregory: Their eyes consist of the same three main parts as ours—the lens; the cornea, which is the horny, transparent skin in front of the eyeball and pupil; and the retina, which receives the images, like the film in a camera. But in the early fishes’ eyes, the cornea is flat as a protection against the water and also because a bulging eye would interfere with swift movement by increasing the resistance. The principal difference, however, is that their eyes point forward and outward. The eyes of all lower animals do. Ours point forward but not outward.

Mr. Mok: What is the effect of this shift in position?

Dr. Gregory: It gives us our bifocal, stereoscopic vision.

Mr. Mok : Have we a monopoly on that ?

Dr. Gregory: Oh, no, the early monkeys began the invention. A few other animals, such as the cat and the owl, had a try at it, but it was not very successful.

Mr. Mok : Where did our eyelids come from ?

Dr. Gregory: The eyelid began as a skin over the eyes of the fishes, but it did not become a sensitive, movable eyelid until the mammals appeared. The shark has a horizontal eyelid which is drawn across the eye like a shutter. You still carry a remnant of it around with you.

Mr. Mok: What is that?

Dr. Gregory: The little red spot in the corner of your eye.

Mr. Mok: Do animals cry as we do?

Dr. Gregory: You mean weeping, don’t you ? The tear ducts and their glands made their first appearance in the land-living animals and were developed fully by the mammals. Essentially, it is a lubricating apparatus to keep the eye moist and clean. But the animals do not weep as we do.

Mr. Mok : I suppose that finishes the features of the face?

Dr. Gregory: Yes, that covers the face of a man pretty well, unless he has a full set of whiskers. If he has, he got it from the mammals, as he did his hair, his eyebrows, and his eyelashes. But don’t forget that a face, whether it is bearded or clean-shaven, handsome or homely, is only one “exhibit” in a museum.

Mr. Mok: A museum?

Dr. Gregory : Yes, man is a museum. I will explain that to you in our next talk.

NEXT MONTH: Dr. Gregory will show that the human body is a museum. In tracing and explaining its part-by-part development through the ages, he will take up the fascinating question of Man’s descent from the apes, and will offer indisputable proof of our monkey ancestry. It will be an outstanding installment in this gripping series, which is to be continued by Dr. Gregory and other world-famed scientists.

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New Discoveries Show Electricity Governs Our Lives

By Edwin Teale

EXPLORERS, working in one of the strangest realms of science, are unearthing curious, dramatic facts. The way autos run, the way seeds sprout, the way eggs hatch, the way radios function, and even the way we feel when we get up in the morning, the latest tests have shown, are affected by flowing, invisible charges of electric power. Recently, experiments in the laboratories of many lands have added to our knowledge of the magical work of electricity in the air.

In Italy, one scientist has sent electric waves racing through the atmosphere to alter the heredity of plants. In Holland, another has used them to kill bacteria and preserve foods. In Germany, a third has obtained astonishing results by administering electrified air to hospital patients. In the United States, two of the country’s foremost surgeons have just announced the discovery that minute electrical charges are vital to our brains and bodies.

From their study of electrical winds and magnetic storms, solar smoke and electrified dust, the workers hope to find the answers to age-old puzzles of Nature. Many scientists believe that the keys to the most baffling enigmas of earth, the mysteries of life, heredity, and death, lie locked in infinitesimal particles charged with electricity. No other field of modern research is so packed with mystery and promise.

One first-class mystery occurred not long ago near Denver, Colo.

More than a hundred automobiles on the road between Denver and Boulder were caught in a howling gale. Flying sand grains filled the air. Suddenly the motors in the cars began to stop.

All along the road, stranded motorists churned their selfstarters unable to understand why the engines wouldn’t function.

Then the wind abated, the engines started, and the cars rolled on. Some mysterious force, generated by the fury of the storm, had thrown the ignition systems temporarily out of order.

This weird performance recalls the rumors during the World War of a mystery ray that was supposed to stop motors and bring down planes. A few weeks ago, an Austrian announced he had actually perfected such an apparatus. According to his claims, the invention projects ultra-short electric waves into the sky to interfere with ignition systems of planes.

A hint of what happened to the cars on the Colorado road is, given by a discovery that has been made by scientists in several parts of the world. Sand storms, it has been found, always generate electricity. Sometimes, the electric particles, or ions, they produce are positive, sometimes negative. It seems to depend upon the chemical composition of the sand and dust. In South Africa, where the rock is largely quartz, the electric particles are always positive; in England, where limestone is the prevailing rock, dust clouds carried by the wind from well-traveled roads are always ionized with charges of the ooposite, or negative, electricity.

Applying this knowledge, Richard E. Vollrath, a young California inventor, has developed an ingenious sand-storm generator. It sends blasts of dust-laden air through copper tubes, generating electricity which is stored in a huge metal sphere. During one test, the electrical charge thus built up is said to have reached 260,000 volts.

The fact that the power of your auto engine varies according to the amount of electricity in the atmosphere was suggested by experiments made at the U. S. Bureau of Standards, in Washington, D. C, last spring. The air at the carburetor intake was charged with different concentrations of ions and the power of the motor was found to fluctuate as the number of electrified particles changed.

At the present time, radio reception is the best it has been since 1923. Long distance signals are coming in more clearly and regularly than at any other time in the last decade. Changes in atmospheric electricity, caused by a minimum of sunspots, is accepted as the explanation. In regular cycles of approximately eleven years, these volcanoes of fiery gas on the surface of the sun increase and decrease in number. They are now at their lowest point. During the next five years, an increasing number will troop across the face of the sun until the high point is reached about 1939. Then they will become fewer and fewer until, in 1945, they will have disappeared entirely and another sunspot cycle will have come to an end.

To learn more about the relation of sunspots and radio, a famous astronomer and a noted engineer have been making tests for the last seven years. They are Dr. Harlan T. Stetson, Director of the Perkins Observatory at Ohio Wesleyan University, and Dr. Greenleaf W. Pickard, radio inventor and one of the first men in America to transmit speech by electrical waves. While Dr. Stetson observed and photographed the sunspots from day to day, his co-worker noted accompanying variations in the strength of radio waves received from a distant broadcasting station.

When the spots were increasing, during 1926, 1927, and 1928, the radio signals grew fainter and fainter. But from 1929 on, as the spots decreased, they gained in strength. The reason, the scientists conclude, is that the huge envelope of ionized particles which surrounds the earth and is known, after its discoverers, as the Kennelly-Heaviside layer, is affected by changes in the sun.

Like an immense cathode ray tube, the sun bombards the earth with streams of electrons. As these strike our outer atmosphere, they break up its tiny particles into positive and negative ions. This blanket of electrified particles, some seventy miles above the earth’s surface, serves as a gigantic mirror, reflecting or bending sky-bound radio waves back to earth. It is only because the waves are thus reflected or refracted by this shell of ions that they are able to travel long distances and circle the earth.

The degree to which the layer is ionized depends upon the activity of the sun. When the sun is most active, that is, when it is dotted with the most sunspots, the greatest number of electrons shoot from it and increased ionization of the Kennelly-Heaviside layer pushes it down nearer the earth’s surface. This in turn bends the radio waves back more abruptly and cuts down the distance they travel.

On the other hand, any decrease in the activity of the sun reduces the intensity of the ionization of the layer, allows it to thin out and rise, thus bending back the waves less abruptly and sending them for longer distances along the surface of the earth. In this manner, the expanding and contracting of a shell-like reflector surrounding the earth, controls the effective distance radio waves will travel.

The moon, as well as the sun, Dr. Stetson reports, has a definite influence over radio reception. Analyzing signals broadcast between Chicago and Boston, he found their strength increased as the moon dipped below the horizon and decreased as it rose overhead. This is due, he believes, to radium rays from the moon, which tend to push down the layer as the moon passes above, thus reducing the distance radio waves can travel.

On all sides of us—floating in the air, streaming from the sun, coursing through our bodies, hidden in the things we eat— are minute charges of electricity. Only in recent years have we known much about these invisible ions. It is thought they usually start out as atoms from which an electron is removed. On sunny days, it is known, there are more ions in the air than on cloudy days; on warm days more than on cold days; on clear days more than when smoke pollutes the sky.

From hour to hour, even from minute to minute, the number of ions in the air varies. It shifts according to the ebb and flow of a titanic battle which goes on unceasingly and unseen around us. This is the struggle between the forces that create ions and the forces that destroy them.

On the side of the ions, the three most powerful allies are: the constant bombardment of the atmosphere by cosmic rays from outer space, the radiation from the sun, and the work of radioactive materials, such as radium, on and below the surface of the earth.

Streaming from the sun are large quantities of exceedingly fine, electrically charged particles. Some scientists call this moving mass solar smoke. As this stream of charged particles approaches us, it comes under the influence of the earth’s magnetic field, and divides into two streams that diverge toward the two magnetic poles. Reaching the outer atmosphere of the polar regions, the particles often collide with the molecules of the air and become discharged, thus producing the beautiful display known as the aurora. The discharged particles, remaining suspended in the upper air, serve as the nuclei for the formation of the high, feathery cirrus clouds.

Waterfalls are also ion factories. Niagara, for instance, charges its water with positive, and the air around the chasm with negative electricity. Splashing water and spray create ions, too. A curious fact in this connection is that salt water spray charges the air around it with positive ions while fresh water charges it with negative ions. Large raindrops become positively charged when they are flattened and broken up by the resistance of the air. In the very highest clouds, other ions are believed to be formed by photo-electric activity among the ice needles. Near the ground, the number of ions is augmented by winds that blow over metals and other surfaces.

Recently, such electricity-bearing winds have been studied by S. D. Flora, State Meterorologist of Kansas. During dry seasons, he found, they cause severe damage to wheat and other grains, leaving long brown streaks across the fields.

But the greatest single factor in the war for the production of ions is the radioactive materials in the earth. They account for about one half of the ionization of the air. Such matter is widely distributed, producing ions in the pores of the earth from which they are withdrawn by the soil’s respiration.

AGAINST these forces are arrayed two great enemies that continually consume or destroy the ions thus formed. One is a recombination of positive and negative ions into atoms or molecules. The other is the attachment of the ions to metal or liquid surfaces, that hold them as flies are held on sticky fly paper.

The outcome of this cosmic battle has greater personal significance than, until recently, we suspected. The latest tests have shown that the state of our health and spirits is closely linked to electricity in the air. Some mornings, for example, we get up feeling exhilirated; other mornings we get up feeling depressed. The difference, say experts in atmospheric electricity, is largely a difference of ions in the air.

As this is written, a ten-room house in Schenectady, N. Y., is the scene of an experiment that may have far-reaching consequences. General Electric engineers are testing a new type of air-conditioning apparatus that controls the elecricity in the air as well as the temperature and humidity. Special mechanisms, designed by Dr. Lewis R. Koller of the General Electric Research Laboratory, count and govern the number of electrified particles in the air while careful records show the effect upon the occupants of the laboratory-home.

The outcome of these experiments may throw light upon a puzzle that baffled eastern ventilating engineers not long ago. After a school was equipped with elaborate apparatus that washed, warmed, and humidified the air, the pupils contracted more colds than before! The answer to the riddle, some experts suggest, may lie in a difference in electrical particles in the air.

That such a difference does affect the human system has been proved definitely by a series of fascinating experiments carried on by Prof. F. Dessauer, of the University of Frankfort, Germany.

Among the Alps of Switzerland, a curious thing has been noticed. On certain peaks, mountain sickness, causing fever, headaches, and nausea which lasted for days, was common. On other peaks, equally high, it was rare. The only difference that scientists could discover in the two locations was in the amount of electricity in the atmosphere.

THIS started Dessauer on his study of the effect of atmospheric electricity upon the human body. He designed a curious ion incubator that would fill a room or a container with air that carried any given quantity of electrified particles. Whether these ions were positive or negative, he found, made all the difference in the world.

Positive ions, the researches demonstrated, produce fatigue, dizziness, headaches, a roaring in the ears, and sometimes nausea. Negative ions, on the other hand, produce a feeling of exhilaration.

Prof. Dessauer has applied these findings to the treatment of various diseases with remarkable success. He reports it has proved effective in asthma, rheumatism, high blood pressure, bronchitis, and arterial trouble.

In a study of 200 cases of high blood pressure, the records show eighty percent of the patients benefited from inhaling ionized air, the treatment extending over a period of several weeks. In cases of rheumatism, the electrified-air treatment was also followed by definite improvement.

Incidentally, the studies revealed a scientific basis for the twinges of rheumatic pain which foretell the coming of a storm. Just before a thunder shower, the scientist discovered, there is an unusual amount of positive electricity in the air near the ground.

Dessauer’s apparatus pours as many as 20,000,000 ions into a cubic centimeter of air, a concentration exceeding that found anywhere in nature. One of these ion generators, driving a current of air over a block of heated magnesium oxide encircled by a metal collar charged with a 6,000-volt current, has been installed in the Beth Israel Hospital, in New York City. Under the direction of Dr. William Bierman, Head of the Department of Physical Therapy, promising results have been obtained. Another Dessauer apparatus is in use at the University of Wisconsin, at Madison.

At Harvard University, Dr. C. P. Yaglou, of the School of Public Health, has been carrying on a series of researches along the same line. He has found that in summer, negative ions have a cooling effect upon the body. He has also run across a scientific puzzle that has not yet been solved.

IN AN empty room, he found, the ion content is about the same as that out-of-doors. But the moment people enter the room, the count drops and remains at a lower level until they leave, when it climbs back to its former position. This cannot be accounted for by saying the ions are absorbed in breathing because the amount of air taken into the lungs is small in proportion to that contained in the room.

Where do the ions go? What makes them disappear and what makes them come back? Students of electricity are seeking the answers.

The further science plumbs this mystery, the closer is the link it finds between life and elecricity. The famous Cleveland, O., surgeon, Dr. George W. Crile, sums up his discoveries in the words: “Electricity keeps the flame of life burning in the cell.” Dr. Charles H. Mayo, one of the noted surgical brothers of Rochester, Minn., adds that minute electrical charges are vital to the functioning of the brain. Dr. J. N. Washburne, of Syracuse University, N. Y., recently told a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that recent researches have led him to believe that learning is a process of arranging into different patterns the ions that are found in the nerve fibers of the brain.

From Russia comes news of a sensational application of ions to the work of food production. The Soviet government has awarded a $5,000 bonus to the Moscow scientist, Dr. M. Chizevitsky, for his discovery that ions can be employed to stimulate the growing of poultry. He found that when negative ions were added to the air in the coops, the poultry showed remarkable progress, rapidly increasing in weight, strength, and agility. The experiments were carried on with 1,000 chickens. As a result, ionized air is being applied to experiments with larger farm animals, a special laboratory having been turned over to the scientist by the government.

Plants, as well as animals, other tests have shown, respond to electricity acting in the air. When the Italian scientist, Dr. M. Mezadroli, carried on his experiments with high-frequency electric waves at Bologna, he found that onions subjected to the wave for thirty minutes a day matured fully ten days ahead of normal. Seeds, bombarded by the electric waves, often showed altered characteristics of heredity when they sprouted. In other tests, this scientist found that he could speed up the activity of silk-worms by placing them in the path of two-meter radio waves.

As scientists feel their way into this mysterious realm of high-frequency waves, they are meeting unexpected and bizarre experiences. At the General Electric laboratory, when Dr. Willis R. Whitney carried on recent experiments, he saw mice lose their tails and hibernating flies revive under the magic power of the short waves.

THE mouse was subjected to increasingly high-field intensities, which caused its body temperature to rise. In the end, without any apparent discomfort to the rodent, its tail shriveled up and dropped away! In another test, fruit flies hibernated in a glass tube when zero blasts passed over it. Then, with the freezing air still blowing over them, they were brought to activity simply by turning on the short radio waves. These warmed them internally. They had become their own heating stoves and were comfortable in spite of the intense cold around them!

Such revelations have made people wonder what effect the constant bombardment of radio waves will have on the human system. What will it do to us seventy years hence? Only within the past dozen years, have high-frequency sets been in operation. Now the trend is definitely toward short-wave transmission. Such electric waves, most potent of all in their effect upon muscles, nerves, and brains, are rapidly increasing in number. Sensational predictions have been made but as yet the evidence in their support is inconclusive.

Imagine cracking an egg on a plate and leaving it in the open air for a month without having it spoil or develop the least odor! That is the feat reported from Soest, Holland, where the scientist, Robert Pape, has been experimenting with the electric presentation of foodstuffs. The perishable produce is placed in an electromagnetic field. Applied in a certain manner, the Dutch worker reports, this is effective in preventing decay.

ANOTHER extraordinary bit of research, in which eggs played a part, is still puzzling the scientists. At the Ontario College of Education, in Canada, research workers prepared specially wired incubators in which the eggs were placed in different positions between negatively and positively charged plates. These eggs hatched in curious fashion. A control group, which has not been subjected to the electrical influence, hatched first. Thirty-six hours later, the eggs which had been placed at right angles to the plates broke open and fully five days late came those which were laid parallel to the plates. Why did the difference in position of the eggs in relation to the electric plates delay the hatching? Nobody knows. The scientists are trying to find out.

Passing over the earth, unfelt except by delicate instruments, are lines of magnetic force flowing between the north magnetic pole, located far inland on the edge of the polar ocean, and the south magnetic pole, lying a thousand miles north of the South Pole on the high, ice-covered plateau at the lower hub of the Earth. These lines of force, running through the air and in the ground, shift according to little-understood laws. For twenty years, the Carnegie, a ship without a nail or bit of steel on board, sailed the seas gathering data on these magnetic lines, a phenomenon closely linked to electricity in the air. In 1929, this vessel, the only one of its kind, was destroyed in a gasoline explosion in western Samoa.

It is now known that magnetism, electricity, volcanoes, and earthquakes are linked in some mysterious way. When a volcano erupts, for instance, compass needles which are far out of range of the earth vibrations are shaken with magnetic tremors. Again after an eruption, when the lava is cooling, it becomes magnetized either positively or negatively according to the direction of the earth’s magnetic field at the time. By studying old lava beds, Dr. A. J. Fleming, of the Carnegie Institution, suggests, scientists may be able to learn new facts about the magnetic history of the earth.

THE latest method of forecasting earthquakes, which is being tried in Chile where small quakes occur almost weekly, employs disturbances in the earth’s magnetism as a sign of an approaching tremor. At the Salto Weather Observatory, in that country, it was noted that severe quakes were always preceded by magnetic storms in the region. Sensitive instruments at the observatory now register minute-to-minute variations in terrestrial magnetism and, on these records, earthquake predictions are being broadcast with the regular weather reports.

In the eastern part of the United States, one of the most curious uses of electricity in the air was recently reported. Mushroom growers found that after an electrical storm the fungi grew most rapidly. Ozone in the air, a product of lightning flashes, was believed to be the cause. So now, when they want to hurry their crops for market, they turn on machines which discharge static electricity into the air and produce conditions similar to those that follow lightning.

That lightning may descend from the heavens to the earth along a path prepared by cosmic rays is the suggestion of John Thadberg, a Stockholm, Sweden, physicist. According to his theory, which was recently presented in a British scientific journal, the rays ionize the air along the irregular path, the electrified particles acting as ferry-boats to carry the bolt across the gap.

Such flashes from the sky add some 100,-000,000 tons of nitrogen to the soil each year, K. B. McEachron, lightning engineer of the General Electric Company, estimates. In passing through the air, which is approximately four-fifths nitrogen, the discharges fix in the ground large quantities of this chemical so vital to plant growth.

FOR a number of years, science has received skeptically tales of lightning that rolled out of the sky in balls. A few weeks ago, however, two scientists in Nebraska not only witnessed such a display but obtained excellent photographs of it. They are Prof. J. C. Jensen, of Nebraska Wesleyan University, Lincoln, and George Raveling, U. S. Weather Bureau observer in the same state. Both saw the ball lightning during violent storms that were almost tornadoes. According to Raveling’s description, a fiery stream poured from the sides of a boiling, dust-laden cloud, like water pouring from a sieve, breaking into spheres of irregular shape as it descended.

In its various forms, electricity, drifting or working in the air around us, is rapidly assuming a more important place in science’s picture of nature. Spectacular advances have been made recently in its study. It still remains, however, a realm of infinite possibilities and many mysteries.

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LIFE from the Test Tube PROMISED BY NEW FEATS OF MODERN ALCHEMISTS

By Robert E. Martin

FOOD from the test tube, strange acids that conquer disease, complex chemicals that make up the vital ingredients of human flesh and blood—these are recent creations of pioneers in a fascinating, unexplored realm of chemistry, far afield from the normal and conventional affairs of workaday laboratories.

Like seekers of another age, hunting an “elixir of life,” these modern alchemists are brewing odorous broths from tons of fish and bales of vegetables in order to extract and study the raw materials of living things. With their new-found knowledge, they are succeeding in putting together extraordinary substances that only nature knew how to produce before. Nearer and nearer they are coming every day to penetrating the age-old mystery of life.

What are you made of? Only now are chemists learning the real answer. Probably you have seen facetious—and unflattering—attempts to evaluate the worth of your body in terms of the market price of its chemical components. You may have been told that you contain just enough iron to make one medium-size nail; enough calcium, or lime, to whitewash a chicken coop; and sufficient sulphur to rid one dog of fleas! Little more impressive, in such an estimate, is the commercial value suggested for the carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen in your body. But let your detractor take just those last four chemicals and try to rebuild them into the staggering complex compounds of which human tissue is made. It may salve your wounded vanity to learn that the nearest laboratory approaches to duplicating these mysterious ingredients of the human body are yielding chemicals that sell for as much as a thousand dollars a pound!

Headquarters for the manufacture of these almost priceless substances is a group of underground, cell-like laboratories at Los Angeles, Calif., where a visitor sees crack research workers under Dr. Max Dunn of the University of California handling rare crystals as if they were crown jewels. Thermostats click occasionally as a liquid-filled vessel cools with infinite slowness—less than a tenth of a degree a day. Crystalline forms in this liquor, gradually taking shape from tiny “seeds,” will permit the first detailed examination of a substance that never before has been obtained in the pure state.

One of the white-smocked experimenters, as you pass through this inner sanctum of chemical magic, is mounting such a crystal in a curious brass instrument called an optical goniometer, so that he may peer through a telescope-shaped eyepiece and measure the angles of its gemlike facets. Another worker, in a lead-lined cell, is placing a glass tube filled with powdered crystals in a powerful X-ray gun. As high-tension electricity buzzes through the vacuum tube, a shadow picture revealing the innermost structure of the mysterious chemical is imprinted upon a photographic film. At a near-by workbench, a giant model of a molecule is slowly taking form, as an assistant fits together black and red balls with wooden rods. It is a representation, billions of times enlarged, of a molecule of the substance under examination, and new groups of balls, representing atoms, are added to fit each new specification disclosed by the delicate laboratory tests.

Just one short step removed from life itself are the precious substances that the Los Angeles experimenters are producing. What flour is to bread, they are to the proteins of the human body—and that is almost as much as saying, the human body itself. They are amino acids, the building blocks of which proteins are made. And it is proteins themselves that constitute the principal material of skin, hair, blood, and muscle—in short, the stuff that human beings are made of. The cells of which your body is composed, one million billion or so of them, are blobs of jellylike protoplasm consisting mainly of protein.

SO APALLINGLY complicated is the chemical structure of a protein that no chemist to date has succeeded in creating a single one. But scientific pioneers, by taking them apart to see what they are made of, have already blazed a trail for the bold leader who may step forward tomorrow and put a protein together in a test tube.

Strange things, seemingly more in keeping with a sorcerer’s den than a modern laboratory, went into the retorts of these research workers—squash seeds and fish entrails, hen’s eggs and wheat, horsehair and goose feathers. With boiling acid, experimenters gave them a chemical “third degree” to try to break them down into simpler substances. What they obtained were near-proteins that they named amino acids—the queer name signifying, to a chemist, the distinctive character of the nitrogen compounds they contain. Were these newly isolated substances the long-sought chemical “missing link” between the realms of inert and living matter?

FURTHER tests showed that they were. A molecule of protein such as is found in living matter, X-ray analysis indicated, is a complicated network or chain of these amino-acid molecules. By linking different kinds of amino acids together in various patterns, millions of kinds of proteins are theoretically possible—far more, in fact, than all the known species of plants and animals on the globe and therefore plenty to account for nature’s infinite variety. So vital to life are these “missing-link”

chemicals known as amino acids that all animals, man included, would quickly perish if deprived of a constant supply. Yet plants alone, in nature, possess the power of manufacturing them from simple materials. Drawing up nitrates from the soil, the plants combine nitrogen from these compounds with carbon dioxide and water to form amino acids, which in turn are built into the different plant proteins.

Animals, unable to duplicate this feat, must feed either on plants or upon other animals that are vegetarians to obtain the amino acids that are essential to their existence. When you eat proteins of plant or animal origin, the digestive fluids break them down at once into their constituent amino acids. The blood stream distributes these to the tissues of the body, where they are rebuilt into the characteristic animal proteins of the particular tissues. Thus they help build up new cells to replace the ones that are constantly broken down by the wear and tear of life processes. An- other vital role is played by these mysterious acids in the production of the hormones, or chemical messengers, that speed through the body to regulate growth, fat-building, and other functions. One thousandth of an ounce of an amino acid called thyroxin, concentrated in the thyroid gland, separates every normal human being from imbecility or death.

No wonder, then, that chemists have eagerly set out to discover the true nature of these all-important chemicals. To date, some twenty-two different amino acids have been found and named. Chemists have learned to draw complex formulas for them, as an engineer draws plans for a bridge. Many—including thyroxin—have actually been created in the laboratory. Others are being isolated and purified from natural proteins, like white of egg, gelatin, and casein. Dr. Dunn’s laboratory is a miniature factory, producing them as needed by other research laboratories where their remarkable properties are being disclosed.

One of the “missing-link” chemicals, named cystine, has been found to have a startling effect on the growth of hair. Sheep, fed with it, produce abundant wool of superior quality.

A compound of another, called d-glutamic acid, flavors food with a meatlike taste. Millions of dollars’ worth of this acid is sold each year to people in the Orient who like meat but are forbidden by their religion to eat it.

Daily administrations of a few grams of a third, named glycine, have been found to aid in curing myasthenia gravis, a strange malady producing muscular weakness.

Most spectacular, however, of the by-products of the search for the chemical secret of life is the production of synthetic food.

Scientists have dreamed of producing artificial “food pills” that would contain everything necessary for life—a feat that would render man forever independent of natural resources for his nourishment, and banish fear of crop failure and famine. Now, as every one knows, human food consists of three main ingredients—fats, carbohydrates, and proteins. Can the chemist put this concoction together?

Synthetic fats from petroleum are an accomplished fact. One such product, called “intarvin,” has actually been used as a part of a diet for diabetics.

Carbohydrates, such as starch and sugar, offer the chemist a more difficult task. Nevertheless, a British experimenter, Prof. E. C. C. Baly of the University of Liverpool, was able to thrill the world of science a few years ago with the announcement that he had made them from carbon dioxide, the gas that is produced by burning carbon; a common mineral salt, potassium nitrate; and water! By treating these simple materials with ultra-violet light, he first produced a sugar closely related to, if not identical with, ordinary glucose or grape sugar. Other sugars and starches followed, so that today the artificial manufacture of these carbohydrates is perfectly feasible.

PROTEINS remained the stumbling block. Until now, experimenters trying out man-made food on laboratory animals have had to supplement the diet with a little natural meat or meat juice, or their charges would slowly starve to death. Would synthetic amino acids, which the animals themselves could transform into the needed proteins, fill the deficiency?

For months, University of Illinois research workers tried out one after another of these artificial protein-forming chemicals on white rats—and recorded failure after failure. Even when as many as seventeen synthetic acids had been compounded and supplied in the diet, to replace the natural protein of which the rats were deprived, some vital ingredient still seemed to be lacking. Then the experimenters added an eighteenth, an amino acid related to the butyric acid that forms when butter turns rancid. It was the missing ingredient! The rats throve on the new diet. For the first time in history, chemists had succeeded in preparing a synthetic food of the protein-forming type, containing no natural ingredients whatever.

In other words, all three of the principal ingredients of natural food can now be manufactured to order by chemists. If the necessary factors known as vitamins can be added —and there is good reason to believe that these will not offer the chemist insuperable difficulties—a complete meal, one hundred percent synthetic, can come out of the test tube!

STILL it remains for laboratory workers to duplicate the crowning feat of nature—to turn the protein-forming amino acids into the full-fledged proteins of animal and human tissue. Before a mechanic can assemble a steam engine, he must know the how and why of boilers, cylinders, and pistons—and so the chemist who would create a protein must lay the groundwork by finding out all that he can about the amino acids of which it is made. That is why the Los Angeles experimenters are testing their solubility in many liquids; studying their behavior in acids and alkalies; bombarding them with heat, light, X rays, and other radiations; studying their colors; testing their electrical properties with sensitive meters; and inspecting their crystal forms with microscopes. When the properties of each one are completely known, and all can be made to order, chemists will be prepared for the supreme attempt to put them together into products like those of nature.

Then, if some one of them succeeds, may come the most dramatic climax in the history of science. Will the test-tube creation be endowed with life? And if so, into what creatures might it be fashioned?

Today, no one can tell.

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Dangerous ACIDS MADE SAFELY BY Home Chemist

By Raymond B. Wailes

BECAUSE they enter into a wide variety of reactions, acids form an interesting and important group of chemicals. By preparing them in small quantities, the home experimenter can learn a great deal about chemistry and its many mysterious reactions and valuable processes.

The fact that many acids are considered dangerous should in no way dampen the amateur chemist’s ardor. Handled cautiously, they are as safe and harmless as a sharp knife in the hands of one who is careful and dexterous. They should, of course, be stored in glass bottles and kept away from clothing and hands. If some acid is spilled accidentally, it should be neutralized immediately by applying a base such as ordinary baking soda.

When diluting a strong acid, always pour the acid into the water, adding it slowly and stirring the mixture with a glass tube or rod. Never pour the acid in quickly. If you do, enough heat may be generated when the two liquids mix to form steam bubbles that will blow the acid and water out of the container.

Although the amateur chemist with his meager supply of equipment cannot prepare concentrated sulphuric acid in his home laboratory, he can manufacture it in a weak form that will illustrate the method and serve to introduce an important chemical phenomenon called catalysis.

To prepare sulphuric acid, you will need some sulphur, water, calcium chlo- ride, and iron (ferric) oxide. The experiment is a simple one and requires only homemade apparatus consisting of a bottle, a flask, glass tubing, a few corks, a glass funnel, a gas burner, and rubber tubing. The parts should be arranged as shown in the illustrations. Flowers of sulphur placed in the shallow lid from a tin can is burned under the funnel at the extreme right. The sulphur dioxide formed together with some air is collected by the funnel and then passes through a drying bottle, containing the calcium chloride, to the horizontal tube of hot iron oxide. The presence of the hot iron oxide causes the sulphur dioxide to steal oxygen from the air and become sulphur trioxide. Because in this reaction, it induces a chemical change in another substance and is unchanged itself, the iron oxide is said to be a catalyst.

Finally, the sulphur trioxide formed is bubbled through water in the absorbing flask at the left. Being soluble, it combines with the water and a weak solution of sulphuric acid results.

Unaided, the original sulphur dioxide formed by the burning sulphur would not follow the desired course through the various tubes and bottles. To pull it through the system, suction must be applied to the mouth of the absorbing flask. This can be done by allowing water to siphon from a gallon jug and applying the suction formed in the jug to the absorbing flask by means of a length of rubber tubing as shown in the drawing.

To prepare the iron oxide catalyst for this experiment, soak some asbestos fiber or pumice stone in iron chloride or some other iron chemical solution until the mass is well saturated. Then add ammonium hydroxide (ordinary household ammonia will serve). This will precipitate iron hydroxide in the pores of the asbestos or pumice. The liquid then can be poured off, fresh water added and shaken and also poured off.

Next heat the impregnated pumice or asbestos in a crucible or tin-can lid over a gas burner. This final operation will convert the iron hydroxide into the desired iron oxide. The finished catalyst then is placed in the horizontal tube and heated gently with a gas burner as the sulphur dioxide is pulled through.

After burning about a teaspoonful of the sulphur, remove the absorber from the system and test the liquid with a piece of blue litmus paper. If an acid is present, the paper will turn pink. To prove that it is sulphuric acid, place a small quantity of the liquid in a test tube and add two drops of hydrochloric acid followed by several drops of barium chloride solution. If sulphuric acid is present, a white precipitate will be formed.

Although sulphuric acid made by this simple process will be weak, it should dissolve bits of magnesium and attack pieces of zinc to produce tiny bubbles of hydrogen gas. Of course, the concentration of the liquid can be increased by boiling but even then the home chemist will find that the acid will be too weak -to be of any great value for experimental purposes. ‘ It is interesting to note, however, that this same type of contact process is used commercially to manufacture sulphuric acid. Of course, a more expensive substance, usually a form of platinum, is used as the catalyst.

While the home chemist will be interested particularly in the chemical uses of sulphuric acid, he can perform a novel experiment to illustrate one of its important physical properties. In a concentrated form, sulphuric acid is capable of absorbing large quantities of moisture from the air. For this reason, it is often referred to as being hygroscopic. To understand this action more clearly, place some strong sulphur- ic acid in a small vessel and expose it to the air. The acid will absorb so much water from the surrounding air that it soon will overflow the container.

Besides many of its other valuable uses, concentrated sulphuric acid can be used to produce another useful chemical —nitric acid. This is done by placing some sodium nitrate or potassium nitrate in a glass retort containing a quantity of sulphuric acid made by mixing equal parts -of the acid and water. When the chemicals are heated, nitric acid vapors will be given off and can be condensed to a liquid by cooling.

To condense these vapors, the best procedure is shown in the photograph. Insert the end of the retort outlet tube in the mouth of a flask and rest the flask in a glass funnel. A stream of water directed on the upper face of the flask then will serve to cool it and condense the vapors leaving the retort. The funnel will serve to catch the cooling water which can be led through a rubber tube to a drain or a large pan or bottle placed on the floor.

Nitric acid manufactured by this method will be found to be quite energetic in its action with metals, carbonates, and other chemicals. Because of its activity, it should be stored in glass-stoppered bottles. It will attack both cork and rubber.

By using sulphuric acid and a small amount of iron sulphate solution, the home experimenter can test for the presence of nitric acid or nitrates. Simply place about a quarter of an inch of the sulphuric acid in a test tube, add an equal amount of iron sulphate solution, being careful not to shake the tube, and then slowly add the liquid to be tested by allowing it to run down the walls of the tube. If a brown ring is formed when the solution reaches the area between the acid and the iron sulphate and gentle heating causes the ring to disappear, it is proof that either nitric acid or a nitrate is present.

Hydrochloric acid, a third member of the important acid family, can be produced by adding ordinary table salt to sulphuric acid and heating the mixture.

Like nitric acid, hydrochloric acid also should be made in an all-glass retort. The end of the exit tube dipped into a water-cooled flask of water then will lead the gas through the water where it will be dissolved to form liquid hydrochloric acid. Although the home chemist can manufacture hydrochloric acid by this method, it will be less expensive and troublesome to use commercial muriatic acid (slightly impure hydrochloric acid).

It is a simple matter to test the distillate formed for hydrochloric acid. If a drop of silver nitrate solution is added to any solution of a chloride, a white curdy precipitate will be formed. Exposed to the sunlight, this precipitate of silver will change to a dark brown owing to decomposition.

An interesting experiment showing how heating may decompose a substance can be performed with some sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride). Being produced when hydrochloric acid gas comes in contact with ammonia gas, it can be made to break apart again by applying heat.

To separate the two gases when they are set free, the home chemist must employ a niterlike wad of asbestos fibers or other nonflammable substance rammed into a glass tube to form a plug. Ammonium chloride then is inserted into the tube at one side of the plug and the tube is mounted horizontally above the small flame of a gas burner.

IN A few seconds, the ammonium chloride will begin to decompose to form hydrochloric acid gas and ammonia gas. Being lighter than the hydrochloric acid gas, the ammonia will diffuse, spread, or travel faster and will issue from the open end of the tube nearest the porous plug. The presence of the gas can be shown by holding a moist strip of red litmus paper near the mouth of the tube until it turns blue. Similarly, the hydrochloric acid gas will issue from the other end of the tube and will give evidence of its presence by coloring damp blue litmus red. In these experiments with acids, and in fact in any experiment where a chemical in a long tube must be heated evenly, the flame-spreading attachment shown in the photograph will form a valuable addition to your gas burner. If you made the burner previously described (P.S.M., May ‘33, p. 53) you will recall that the stack was made from a six-inch piece of three-eighths-inch iron pipe. To make a flame spreader, simply select a three-eighths-inch pipe cap, saw three slots across the top of the cap sixty degrees apart, drill holes at the ends of each slot, and finally screw the cap into place on threads cut in the upper end of the burner.