George R Harrison - Atoms in Action - The World of Creative Physics

I. THE TAMING OF ENERGY, 3

II. WHEN PHYSICS GOES FARMING, 20

III. SOUND RIDES THE WIRE, 44

IV. GLASS-MORE PRECIOUS THAN RUBIES, 65

V. LIGHT FOR A LIVING WORLD, 82

VI. THE RANSOMED ELECTRON, 107

VII. SOUND BORROWS WINGS, 130

VIII. EYES THAT SEE THROUGH ATOMS, 155

IX. THE DOCTOR AND THE PHYSICIST, 177

vii

CONTENTS

X. GLASS SHARPENS VISION, 198

XI. EYES FOR THE MEMORY, 219

XII. SIGHT CONQUERS SPACE, 244

XIII. THE CAPTURE OF MELODY, 262

XIV. OUTWITTING THE WEATHER, 289

XV. MAN CLIMBS THE WINDS, 311

XVI. THE END IS NOT YET, 333

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 349

SUGGESTED READING, 353

INDEX, 359

The author is not here concerned with the more philosophical questions of the nature of things/ continues Dr. Compton. He tells us rather how energy is used in heating our homes, preserving our,-food in refrigerators, in doing our daily tasks, and the ways in which this energy is stored and changed to the desired form.

He tells us about the recording of Sound and the development of the telephone, how the electron has been put to work in the radio and in electrical control equipment. The principles of optical instruments, from telescopes to photography, are clearly discussed. In fact, while no attempt has been made to make the book comprehensive, examples are taken from so many fields of modern life, including the home, the farm and the factory, that the reader gains an impressive view of the power of the principles of physics in guiding all our activities.

No book such as this could have been written before, for the science of physics has only recently shown the wide importance of its applications. Nor do I expect another presentation with comparable reliability, information and human appeal to appear for many years. It is a didtinctive addition to the literature of modern science."

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof,

may not be reproduced in any form without

permission of the publisher.

ELECTROSTATIC GENERATOR, 14

EFFECT OF LIGHT ON PLANTS, 30 TELEPHONE LINES OF THE FUTURE, 62

SHATTERING OF GLASS BY A BALL, 78

THE BRIGHTEST LAMPS YET DEVISED, 103

THE LEVELS OF MATTER AND ENERGY, 110, 111

LARGE ELECTRONIC VACUUM TUBES, 118

AUDIO AND RADIO WAVES, 140

LARGE SPECTROGRAPH AND SPECTRUM, 166

ILLUSTRATIONS

PHOTOMICROGRAPHS OF METALS, 206

STRAIN BANDS FROM PHOTO-ELASTICITY, 214

PHOTOGRAPHY BY INFRA-RED, 231

ULTRA-VIOLET PHOTOGRAPHY, 232

SWINGING GOLF CLUB, 238

ICONOSCOPE AND KINESCOPE, 246

A RECORD PRESS, 270

SOUND TRACKS MAGNIFIED, 278

SPOOL OF FLYING YARN, 310

WIND TUNNEL, 318

Bright-flaming, heat-full fire, the source of motion.

DU BARTAS

WHETHER yesterday was sunny or cloudy, a June day or a day in December, enough energy fell on the earth during that twenty-four hours to serve humanity for several centuriesenough to keep the worlds furnaces roasting and its refrigerators icy, to spin its wheels and refine its ores, and to fill for several hundred years every other present need for power. The wheels of civilization are kept turning by energy; and all this energy, whether we draw it from a gallon of gasoline, a ton of coal, or a pound of butter, has come to us from the sun.

So long as the sun keeps shining we appear to have little cause to worry about running out of energy, and the best evidence indicates that our powerhouse in the heavens will still be glowing brilliantly a billion years from now. Unfortunately, however, most of the energy we are now using came from the sun in ages past, and we are drawing heavily on the earths savings account of coal and oil instead of using our current energy income. Even though the sun sends us two hundred thousand times as much power as we use, most of this slips through our fingers, merely because we have not yet learned how to convert sunlight efficiently into those forms of energy which are useful for civilized living.

Select on a map any convenient desert, and look at an area twenty miles squarean area which would about cover the sprawling environs of a great city. Year after year enough sunlight is lavished on this small sandy waste to satisfy perpetually the power needs of the entire population of the United States at the present rate of power consumption. In fact, grimy miners digging six thousand tons of coal from the gloomy depths of the earth obtain only an amount of energy equivalent to that swallowed on a sunny day by a single square mile of land or sea.

Almost every material problem of living turns out in the last analysis to be a problem of the control of energy. The householder, when he has paid his bills for fuel and electricity, is likely to consider that he has taken care of his energy requirements for the month, yet each bill from the grocer or the milliner is quite as truly a bill for energy. We do not buy a basket of strawberries for the carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen atoms they contain, but for the energy stored by these atoms when they join together in molecules to form sugars, starches, flavors, and vitamines. That part of the cost of a ladys hat which does not represent business acumen on the part of the milliner is for stored and directed energythe atoms of matter of which the hat is composed are permanent, and will still exist when the hat has been discarded and burned. Only energy and knowledge of how to apply it are needed to re-create a hat from its smoke and ashes!

Even such materials as gold, silver, and copper represent true wealth only as they represent the energy required to find, collect, and purify these metals. Our supply of matter on earth is not changing appreciably, for although a little hydrogen and helium leak off from the top of the atmosphere, far more matter than we lose in this way is brought to the earth by meteorites. Iron may rust or be scattered, but it cannot be lost so long as sufficient energy remains to reconcentrate and re-refine it. Many a mine long abandoned as worthless has brought in a fortune when cheaper power or a more efficient concentrating process has made worth while the recovery of further metal from its scrap-heap. Only energy is needed to gather as much of every material as we may need from the air, the land, or the sea.

Energy is wealth, and in the case of apprenticed sunlight, wealth of a particularly desirable kind, for it is freshly created and does not involve robbing the poor, taxing the rich, or despoiling the earth of materials which may be needed by our descendants as much as by ourselves. Yet this energy is freeto him who can discover how to capture and control it.

The scientist who is most concerned with the investigation and control of energy is the physicist. In his researches on energy the physicist works very closely with the chemist, who is interested primarily in matter. Matter and energy are always closely related; and physics and chemistry, originally a single science called natural philosophy, can never be separated completely, for they are the twin sciences which deal with the fundamental structure of our physical universe.