Compass Needle is Unreliable

“TRUE as the needle to the pole”

says an old song, meaning that the sailor could depend on the compass pointing out true north. But when Christopher Columbus made his famous first voyage, he found out that the compass does not point in the same direction, in various parts of the world. It then pointed north in Europe, but not in America. And now it points north in America, but not in Europe. Furthermore, there are local variations, due to unknown causes.
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Giant Molecules: the Machinery of Inheritance

How Genetics, Youthful Science of Inheritance, Has produced Billions of Dollars of Wealth . . . Big Things that Boil Down to the Minutest Controls.

By BARCLAY MOON NEWMAN

THE remarkable discoveries in the youthful science of inheritance, genetics, have been applied to animal and plant breeding throughout civilization—and with almost incredible success. As regards the United States alone, during the past 30 years, even a conservative estimate of the cash value of the practical application of genetic findings would have to run into billions of dollars. Far greater yields of grains, fruits, vegetables, and cotton; far higher quality both in domestic plants and domestic animals of every description and their products, including milk, meat, eggs, and wool; increased and sometimes perfect resistance to disease; entirely new commercial varieties; and the lessening of the chances of famine: all these are in this story of science. Read the rest of this entry »

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Radium ~ Science’s Most Mysterious Servant

Radium, the most mysterious element of science, is now accomplishing amazing feats in medicine and engineering. New uses for this marvelous substance are described here.

by ALFRED ALBELLI

FAR off in the isolated hamlet of Cabri, situated in a remote part of the province of Saskatchewan, Canada, a woman suffering from cancer listened to her physician solemnly pronounce her death-knell.

“Madame,” he said, in the somber note of a doctor who must admit that he cannot cope with the unfathomable ravages of Nature, “I am helpless. Our battle is done. There’s only one possible means of saving your life. It is radium.”
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Name Elements 99 and 100

Two great scientists who died within the last year, Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi, have been honored by the naming of elements 99 einsteinium and 100 fermium. The symbol for einsteinium is plain E, that for fermium, Fm. Now all discovered elements are named, since 101 was previously named mendelevium after the Russian, D. Mendeleev, who announced the periodic system of the elements in 1869.

“Certain astronomers have suggested that the whole phenomenon of novae is due to collapse of the star, and that the energy released in the explosion was produced by compression within. They argue that the nova is a stage in the star’s evolution, the outburst marking one last splurge before it settles down to enjoy a lengthy old age.

The second outburst of T Coronae, however, clearly proves that the collapse theory is wrong.”

It is true that the nova on T Coronae Borealis which is a recurrent nova was not due to gravitational collapse of the star. However the other supernova they talk about, “Tycho’s Star“, is actually a type Ia supernova and was caused by the collapse of a white dwarf.

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When Suns Explode

Ours seems sturdy, but bursting stars reveal illness of others.

By DONALD H. MENZEL

Professor of Astrophysics, Harvard University AN EXPLODING star is not news. Dozens of stars blow up each year, increasing: their brilliance 10,000 times or more. Most of them, however, are extremely faint before the outburst, and even at peak brightness are not visible to the naked eye. Really bright objects are rare. But when a star bursts twice in a century-that is astronomical news! It gives us significant scientific information about such stars.
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THE AMATEUR SCIENTIST

On the fascination of microscopy and some curious amateur observations of the moon.

Conducted by Albert G. Ingalls

ADAM’S lack of foresight when he named the creatures of the earth (Genesis 2:19) certainly made things difficult for his scientific descendants. If he had made a list of the animals as he named them, how easy it would now be, for instance, to label a microscope slide! As it is, the rediscovery and renaming of the world’s organisms has been slow, painful work. Aristotle knew about 520 animals and Theophrastus could identify approximately the same number of plants. Read the rest of this entry »

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A “Down the CELLAR” Chem Lab

by FREDERICK O. SCHUBERT

Here are some interesting experiments you can perform with simple chemicals, with notes on building the beginnings of your own basement chemistry lab. More next month!

NOW that we’ve succeeded in shoving Andy, the grease monkey, and the rest of the “hangar gang” over a bit for the lab boys, let’s get together and make real use of our “chem” pages. Read the rest of this entry »

SCIENCE IS A PRISONER OF WAR

WHO won the war is already an old argument. But certainly science, forging the final weapon, stopped the war. Yet, a year later, science is still literally a prisoner of war.

When science was mobilized, the military services quite properly invaded the universities. They had to halt the basic research. They put the men and machines of science to work on the pressing necessities that mothered radar, sonar, loran, and a thousand other urgent applications of that basic research. The scientists did their work well, including the actual manufacture of such things as the rockets and the trained atoms. Read the rest of this entry »

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“HOT DOGS” IN THE LAB

by Harry M. Schwalb

Condensed from The Laboratory In 1939 the hot dog hit the front pages of the international press when President Roosevelt’s wife served it to the king and queen of England. And as 1955 draws to an end, Americans, by devouring over 8y2 billon tangy “red hots,” have made the frankfurter or wiener (formulation’s the same, though the wiener is a bit shorter) a major phase of the meat industry, outranking everything but ice cream in popularity on the national menu. Read the rest of this entry »

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15 Million Volts to Shatter Atom

GOLD from lead was the aim of the old alchemists; the modern electro-chemist may accomplish it, with the apparatus shown above; yet it is not to be expected that gold so obtained will repay the cost of production. The quantity will be small, compared with the expense of the apparatus and of the power required. The purpose of this investigation is to obtain more information concerning the nature of the atom and the mysteries of its complicated structure. Read the rest of this entry »

SCIENCE NEWS of the MONTH

Estimates of Universe’s Size Vary

•IN the latest estimate of the size of the universe, contained in the Smithsonian tables of scientific data, there is considerable latitude. The largest estimate of the mileage, that of Dr. Edwin Hubble, is 190 billion light-years, or 1,140 sextillion miles. The smallest is that of Dr. Willem de Sitter, 76 quintillion miles, or 13 million light-years. The ratio is that between a mile and a third of an inch, or 15,000 to one, between these guesses. At any rate, it’s a long walk before breakfast. Read the rest of this entry »

There is a lot of really interesting, important science on this one page. We have cosmic expansion, nuclear fission, Kaluza–Klein theory, proto-computing, the advancement of fluoroscopy, an incorrect model of planetary formation, and um… a way to identify criminals by their sinuses.

Science News of the Month

TO ATTEMPT ATOMIC DISINTEGRATION BY MAGNETS
BY the use of atomic protons, or nuclei of hydrogen atoms, Drs. Ernest O. Lawrence and M. Stanley Livingston, of the University of California, expect to bombard atoms of other substances and, by breaking up their nuclei, to achieve transmutation, or conversion of one metal into another.
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