bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
College: Too far, too fast?
Authors: Zemansky Mark W.
Published: April 2009

AT A CONFERENCE of physics teachers held in Denver in 1961, I gave vent to some of my pet peeves with regard to changes in the freshman physics course designed for the physics major. These remarks were printed in the American Journal of Physics, and as I reread them, they still make sense to me. My objections to (1) the inclusion of large amounts of relativity and quantum theory, (2) the indiscriminate skipping of large chunks of physics, like statics, acoustics and geometrical optics, (3) the attempt to induce “depth of insight,” (4) the emphasis on history and philosophy and (5) the harping on “scientific method” at the expense of “facts,” still stand and I shall therefore not repeat them.
CERN Muon Ring Finds g Agrees with Electrodynamics
Authors: Ellis R. Hobart
Published: April 2009

To study the muon, catch one and watch its spin precess. Any difference between the precession rate you see and the one predicted by modern electrodynamics may be a clue to that puzzling enigma: What is the real difference between the muon and the electron? They appear to be alike except that the muon is 207 times as massive as the electron. But nature usually observes strict economy and does not display any particles that do not fit uniquely into the scheme of things.
Karl Kelchner Darrow—Writer, councilor and secretary
Authors: Van Vleck John H.
Published: April 2009

THERE COMES A TIME when it is appropriate for an opera association to recognize not just the prima donnas and conductors, who receive the customary applause, but also the stage manager, who is usually hidden behind the stage but who is responsible that everything goes smoothly. The American Physical Society finds itself in essentially this position. Our stage manager, of course, has been Karl Darrow, who has just completed 26 years of service as secretary, twice as long a term as anyone else. Incidentally he held the same seats at the old Metropolitan Opera House for 48 years; so the operatic analogy seems particularly à propos. When things go smoothly, one takes the stage manager for granted, but once things go awry, he is the target of complaint. It is a tribute to the way Darrow has performed his duties as secretary of APS that he has never had to be its whipping boy.
SLAC: The program
Authors: Ballam Joseph
Published: April 2009

WITH TRIAL RUNS NEARING completion, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center is getting ready to carry out its initial experimental program. This program has been planned to expoit fully the special properties of the two-mile-long electron beam—its 20-GeV energy, very good optical properties and great intensity. These features will permit the production of useful beams of electrons, positrons, photons, muons and even strongly interacting particles such as pions, kaons and antiprotons. The electron, positron and photon beams will have the highest energy presently available (except for very weak beams produced by the decay of neutral pions at the CERN and Brookhaven accelerators). The muon beam will be uniquely high in purity and can have up to 18.0-GeV energy. For some experiments the pion, kaon and antiproton beams will be competitive with similar beams at the large proton accelerators, but in general they will not be superior.
Phimsy
Authors: Ellis R. Hobart
Published: April 2009

What I am doing here; Accentuating the practical; Finding what's old; You can just subscribe.
The European-American Nuclear-Data Committee
Authors: Havens William W. , Kolstad George A. , Smith Alan B. , Taschek Richard F.
Published: April 2009

NUCLEAR DATA REQUIRED for today's atomic-power programs are largely gathered, stored and disseminated under the supervision of the European-American Nuclear-Data Committee, a group of 16 individual scientists who represent 21 nations and two international organizations. Formed in 1959 under the auspices of the European Nuclear Energy Agency of the Organization for Economic Coöperation and Development, the committee has distinguished itself by leadership in program planning and by effective coördination of several national nuclear-data activities.
The septuagenarian electron
Authors: Thomson Sir George
Published: April 2009

THE YEAR 1897 HAS the best claim to be the birth year of the electron; for in it the main ideas, which for the next 30 years at least made up this concept, were first clearly stated and supported by strong evidence—though a little short of proof.
An institute in North Bengal
Authors: Hafner Everett M.
Published: April 2009

AN INSTITUTE FOR COLLEGE physics teachers, which I helped to operate at North Bengal University last summer, was a failure. Our frustration arose from a conjunction of factors: inadequate planning, language barriers, poor facilities, shortcomings of the staff and psychological hazards germane to the teacher-participants themselves. Had one or two of these problems been recognized in advance, the session might never have convened, and much effort would have been spared for better things. Conversations with other physicists in India, where ten similar institutes were in operation, revealed that our effort was perhaps the least successful. I suspect, however, that some of our difficulties are common to many collaborative programs of this kind, involving a wide range of disciplines and a variety of levels. If this is true, my description of the problem in Bengal may bring a larger picture into focus, and my recommendations for future activity may be generally useful.
Ion Implantation Aids Solid-State and Nuclear Research
Authors: Holbrow Charles H.
Published: April 2009

Recently a technique has been developed that uses the recoil energy of Coulomb-excited nuclei to implant them in a crystal lattice. The excited nuclei can easily be aligned, and useful information about the nuclear levels themselves, as well as the crystal in which they are implanted, can be extracted from the characteristic gamma-ray angular distributions. Magnetic moments of excited 2+ and 4+ states have been determined in this way. Useful information about the lattice also can be obtained by studying the emitted gamma rays with the Mössbauer effect.
Phimsy
Authors: Ellis R. Hobart
Published: April 2009

Hodes, the PT Washington man; Postwar breakthroughs; The antilaw of gravity.
Mössbauer effect
Authors: Wertheim Gunther K.
Published: April 2009

TODAY NEW DISCOVERIES in physics are rapidly assimilated. Although only nine years have passed since Rudolf Mössbauer submitted his first article, the Mössbauer effect is currently being used in many undergraduate physics laboratories, and four or five manufacturers are offering off-the-shelf Mössbauer spectrometers.
Wire spark chambers
Authors: Baker Winslow
Published: April 2009

THE WIRE SPARK CHAMBER is emerging as one of the dominant instruments for high-energy research. Usually a part of a larger system involving other particle detectors and computers, it is relatively inexpensive and can be easily replaced or exchanged in an experiment. The high rate at which it collects data permits the simultaneous study of several different reactions of similar topology. It is also being introduced into other fields where it is necessary to measure the trajectory of a charged particle quickly and accurately.
Geophysics instrumentation
Authors: Howard John N.
Published: April 2009

IN MANY WAYS geophysical experiments are like space research, requiring major logistic efforts and expensive vehicles to carry even a simple instrument to the remote and largely inaccessible environment. To the general public, geophysical studies seldom have the glamor or excitement of an experiment in space: our launches are seldom televised, and our successes (or failures) are chronicled in the drier pages of scientific journals. But to the geophysicist the research offers many challenges: there are still many mountains to be climbed and mysteries to be solved. Only after we better understand the physical mechanisms of our environment will we have any hope of controlling it. Then, perhaps, people will no longer say that everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.
Phimsy
Authors: Ellis R. Hobart
Published: April 2009

A physicist on a physicist; Our readers abroad; We wonder why; Bobbing bird beats beam problem.
Neutron spectrometry
Authors: Cranberg Lawrence
Published: April 2009

PROBLEMS OF SPECTROMETRY are by definition those of plotting particles of diverse energies in a two-dimensional array that shows numbers of particles as a function of energy. The prototype was discovered and solved in the 17th century by Isaac Newton when he accomplished the decomposition of white light into a spectrum with a refracting prism. The 19th century brought extension of the problem to electrically charged particles, and it was solved by exploiting the energy and momentum dependence of charged-particle motions in electric and magnetic fields. James Chadwick's discovery of the neutron in 1932 presented the problem in still another form, in which the particles are, like photons, electrically neutral, but, unlike photons, they interact only with the nuclear constituents of matter. It is not surprising, therefore, that the problems of neutron spectrometry exhibit distinctive peculiarities and difficulties. Let us discuss some aspects of the problem as seen from the perspective of recent developments.
Are most stars members of double-star systems?
Authors: Winkler Louis
Published: April 2009

A DOUBLE-STAR SYSTEM consists of two separate stars that orbit about the center of mass of the system much as a planet orbits the sun. For the most part, these double-star systems appear as single points of light, even with the aid of a telescope. Nevertheless, there is evidence that a large fraction of all the single points we see are really double-star systems.
Thomson's dilemma
Authors: Finn Bernard S.
Published: April 2009

APPLICATION of the second law of thermodynamics in its classical form requires that the heat of each process be convertible into work; that is, each process must be reversible. Since no real system meets this criterion, analysis is then made in terms of some imaginary limiting case in which the parameters have been adjusted to make the irreversible effects negligible. It is sometimes impossible, however, to imagine a limit in which the irreversible processes can be disregarded. This problem was first faced by William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) in his thermoelectric researches. His dilemma was this: Even if he did ignore the irreversible processes, he found he could still apply the second law with what seemed to be very satisfactory results. This dilemma was sufficiently interesting to excite some of the best theoretical and experimental minds over the century that was to follow Thomson's work.
Evidence for superheavies in mica looks weaker
Authors: Lubkin Gloria B.
Published: April 2009

Last June when evidence for the presence in several mica samples of element 126 and possibly numbers 116, 124 and 127 was reported, great excitement was generated (PHYSICS TODAY, August 1976, page 17). The experiment, by a collaboration from Oak Ridge, University of California at Davis and Florida State University, had been done by bombarding the sample with protons and looking for characteristic x rays from elements between Z = 105 and Z = 134. Now a variety of follow-up experiments have been done by members of the original team and by other groups, all of which suggest that the evidence for superheavies is weaker than before.
Amorphous-silicon doping brightens solar-cell picture
Authors: Leuchtag H. Richard
Published: April 2009

The success of solar cells in powering space vehicles is well known, but for earthbound applications much more stringent economic constraints apply. This is one reason for the great interest in photovoltaic devices based on doped amorphous semiconductors, which promise to be much easier and cheaper to manufacture in quantity than single-crystal cells.
Dubna believes it has produced element 107
Authors: Lubkin Gloria B.
Published: April 2009

A group at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, headed by Georgi Flerov, says it has synthesized element 107. If verified, the Dubna observation would be the highest-Z manmade element. It is the latest in a long series of attempts to extend the periodic table, made sometimes at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, sometimes at Dubna, sometimes at both. (More recently a group at Oak Ridge has joined the competition.) One priority dispute, over the discovery of element 104, is being settled by having a Dubna experimenter observe the Berkeley experiment and a Berkeley experimenter observe the Dubna experiment. Two years ago Berkeley and Dubna both announced the discovery of element 106 (PHYSICS TODAY, November 1974, page 19). In the case of element 107, however, Berkeley is not claiming to have found 107, although Albert Ghiorso told us they would like to start looking for it this year.
Dynamic failure in solids
Authors: Curran Donald R. , Seaman Lynn , Shockey Donald A.
Published: April 2009

All material failure is dynamic, almost by definition. It advances by rate processes that have threshold conditions and characteristic growth kinetics.
Wide-ranging experiments at Los Alamos meson factory
Authors: Lubkin Gloria B.
Published: April 2009

The Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility is now running routinely at 100 microamps average beam current, and according to director Louis Rosen is the largest, most diversified nuclear-physics facility in the world. One of several existing meson factories, LAMPF runs at the highest energy, 800 MeV, and eventually is expected to reach a maximum beam intensity of 1000 microamps. Meanwhile, Rosen points out, LAMPF accelerates more protons/second above the pion-production threshold than the sum of all the proton intensities of all the accelerators all over the world.
Bell Labs reports manmade single-crystal monolayer alloys
Authors: Lubkin Gloria B.
Published: April 2009

A group at Bell Laboratories has reported making single-crystal monolayer alloys of gallium arsenide and aluminum arsenide. This work could be the forerunner of a whole class of synthetic inorganic crystals that are identical in composition but distinct in structure and properties from naturally occurring compounds. Manmade superlattices, which consist of alternating layers of monocrystalline semiconductors, had been built at IBM and at Bell Labs earlier (PHYSICS TODAY, August 1973, page 20 and August 1975, page 17), but each layer was considerably thicker. The new crystals, according to Joseph Giordmaine (Bell Labs), differ in both their short-range and long-range order from their parent crystals, whereas the properties of the thicker superlattices can be largely predicted from the bulk properties of the alternating layers.
Massachusetts dish for radio astronomy at 1 mm
Authors: Lubkin Gloria B.
Published: April 2009

A new millimeter-wave radio telescope was recently dedicated at the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory, 12 miles from Amherst, Mass. The 45-foot diameter dish will be used primarily to study molecular clouds in our galaxy. The instrument is expected to have the highest resolution at 1 mm wavelength of any radio telescope in the world.
Can physics develop reasoning?
Authors: Fuller Robert G. , Karplus Robert , Lawson Anton E.
Published: April 2009

The life of every physicist is punctuated by events that lead him to discover that the way physicists see natural phenomena is different from the way nonphysicists see them. Certain patterns of reasoning appear to be more common among physicists than in other groups. These include:

▸ focussing on the important variables (such as the force that accelerates the apple, rather than the lump it makes on your head);

▸ propositional logic (“if heat were a liquid it would occupy space and a cannon barrel could only contain a limited amount of heat, but this is contrary to my observations, so…”), and

▸ proportional reasoning (for example, the restoring force of a spring increases linearly with its displacement from equilibrium).
Solar power from satellites
Authors: Glaser Peter E.
Published: April 2009

Various alternative energy sources have been proposed in the last few years, many of them figuring in the pages of PHYSICS TODAY. The recognition that no one of these energy sources will, by itself, meet all future power needs, together with the large uncertainties inherent in the achievement of full potential for each of them, has led to what might appear the most daring proposal so far: large-scale solar-energy conversion in space with a satellite solar-power station located in synchronous orbit around Earth—that is, at an altitude of 22 300 miles above the surface.
New measurement of magnetic-moment anomaly tests QED
Authors: Scott John T.
Published: April 2009

Once again quantum electrodynamics, which has already earned itself the description “the most successful dynamical theory in all of physics,” comes under close scrutiny as further refinements in experimental technique provide data sufficiently precise to test this highly respected theory. Hans Dehmelt (University of Washington) reported at the Chicago meeting of the American Physical Society last month on measurements made in collaboration with Robert Van Dyck Jr and Paul Schwinberg of the magnetic moment anomaly of the electron. Brief notes on the experimental method had appeared earlier in Nature; a more extensive paper on the new measurement is in Physical Review Letters.
Budget includes three centers for synchrotron radiation
Authors: Lubkin Gloria B.
Published: April 2009

The growing interest in using synchrotron radiation has led to a shortage of facilities for such experiments. Former President Ford's budget request for FY 1978, submitted to Congress in mid-January, calls for building dedicated sources at Brookhaven National Laboratory and the University of Wisconsin and improving the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Project. SSRP operates symbiotically with SPEAR, which is primarily used as a high-energy physics storage ring.
Electron cooling offers high-luminosity antiproton beams
Authors: Lubkin Gloria B.
Published: April 2009

An old idea in accelerator design, called “electron cooling,” has been demonstrated to work in experiments over the last two years at the Nuclear Physics Institute in Novosibirsk. The Siberian success has inspired groups at CERN and Fermilab to start experiments on electron cooling with the hope that these might lead to high-energy colliding-beam experiments involving protons and antiprotons.
2.4-meter telescope could orbit in 1983
Authors: Lubkin Gloria B.
Published: April 2009

If Congress and the President are willing, NASA plans to orbit the Space Telescope some time in the fourth quarter of 1983. The Space Telescope is a complete astronomical facility with a 2.4-meter aperture optical telescope, signal detectors and a number of instruments. NASA is asking for $36 million in fiscal year 1978. The total program cost is expected to be $435 million. In anticipation of approval, NASA recently released an Announcement of Opportunity for proposing instruments. (Copies of this announcement can be obtained from the Project Scientist, C. Robert O'Dell, DS-30, Marshall Space Flight Center, Ala. 35810.)
J. J. Thomson and the Bohr atom
Authors: Heilbron John L.
Published: April 2009

In 1911 Niels Bohr went to Cambridge, hoping to talk physics with J. J. Thomson; the discoverer of the electron was friendly but uninterested. Two years later Bohr published his epochal three-part paper on the constitution of atoms and molecules, which challenged the program and goal of the Cambridge school. Bohr's new views soon won out; Thomson's quaint atomic models were declared worthless—old lumber fit only, as Ernest Rutherford put it, “for a museum of scientific curiosities.” For his part Thomson rejected the advances made by Bohr as meretricious superficialities obtained without, or at the price of, an understanding of the mechanism of atoms.
Physics in 1976—a personal account
Authors: Fowler William A.
Published: April 2009

It was a great honor to serve as President of The American Physical Society during the Bicentennial year of the United States. In this article I will report briefly on the accomplishments of the APS in 1976 and then move on to a more personal account—my own feelings and impressions of the image of the physicist and his role in the larger society. I hope to do away with a few stereotypes, shatter some myths and, finally, outline the potential for physicists making greater contributions to the solution of societal problems than they have ever done before. I will start with the commemoration of the Bicentennial.
Sea-floor data link glaciation to Earth's orbital motion
Authors: Lubkin Gloria B.
Published: April 2009

The old theory that ice ages are triggered by orbital motion of the Earth around the Sun has received additional support from recent oceanographic studies. The experimenters, James D. Hays (Lamont–Doherty Geological Observatory), John Imbrie (Brown University) and Nicholas J. Shackleton (Cambridge University) have reported evidence that periodic changes in the shape, tilt and seasonal positions of the Earth's orbit triggered ice ages.
New evidence supports supernova origin of solar system
Authors: Spruch Grace Marmor
Published: April 2009

Measurements of isotopic anomalies in meteorites have stimulated theoreticians to consider new models for the formation of the solar system. Several groups suggest that a supernova explosion was the trigger. Observational evidence for a supernova having triggered star formation provides support for this view.
Photophysics and photochemistry
Authors: Letokhov V. S.
Published: April 2009

Current progress with tunable lasers has made possible the selective excitation of practically any single quantum state of an atom or a molecule with excitation energy in the range 0.1 to 10 eV. Already we can obtain coherent radiation with sufficient intensity to excite a significant fraction of an atomic or molecular sample into chosen quantum states in the wavelength range 2000 Å to 20 microns. Systematic studies of the effect of selective laser radiation on matter have been under way since around 1969 and 1970, when substantial progress in the art of quantum electronics made the experiments possible.
Washington is the site for the sixth CLEA
Authors: Carr Bruce C.
Published: April 2009

The sixth biennial Conference on Laser Engineering and Applications (CLEA) will be held 1–3 June in Washington, D.C. Washington promises to be beautiful this time of year, even though few cherry blossoms will still be in view.
Occultation observations reveal ring system around Uranus
Authors: Bennett Floyd C.
Published: April 2009

Much precise calculating and thorough planning went into preparations earlier this year for the first observed occultation of a star by the planet Uranus, but it was chance—and cautious allowance for chance—that led to the serendipitous discovery of five or more rings about the planet. Large uncertainties in the time at which the occultation would commence and in estimates of how far north it would be visible caused several observers to turn on their photometric equipment well in advance of the predicted moment—and only thus did they detect the unforeseen dips in the occulted star's light intensity that revealed Uranus as the second ringed planet in the solar system. Three groups promptly reported the unexpected dips, which they originally thought were caused by small Uranian satellites. James L. Elliot, Edward Dunham and Douglas Mink (Cornell University), aboard the flying Kuiper Airborne Observatory, saw brief occultations both before and after the star passed behind Uranus. Robert L. Millis and Lawrence H. Wasserman (Lowell Observatory) and Peter V. Birch (Perth Observatory, Western Australia) have reported similar pre-immersion observations by Millis, Birch and Daniel Trout (Perth), and J. C. Bhattacharyya and K. Kuppuswamy (Indian Institute of Astrophysics) at Kavalur, Madras, also reported a single event. The Cornell group was the first to suggest that the brief occultations were due to thin rings—not small satellites—because the time intervals between their pre-immersion and post-emersion events were nearly equal.
Will supergravity unify quantum theory with general relativity?
Authors: Lubkin Gloria B.
Published: April 2009

Recently some theorists have been trying to unify general relativity and quantum theory into a framework called “supergravity.” The hope is that supergravity theory will provide a link between gravitation and particle physics. So far the work can be characterized as highly mathematical and limited to a relatively small group of practitioners. But enthusiasm among its proponents runs high.
Evidence for 1012-gauss field on neutron star
Authors: Levi Barbara G.
Published: April 2009

A sharp spike in the x-ray energy spectrum from Hercules X-1 may have provided the first direct measurement of the magnetic flux on the surface of a neutron star. The German discoverers of this peak have interpreted it as cyclotron emission from electrons circulating around magnetic field lines in the polar region of the star. The associated magnetic field strength would be about 5×1012 gauss, in good agreement with theoretical predictions that the field on the surface of neutron stars should range from 1010 to 1013 gauss.
The magnetism of rare-earth metals
Authors: Mackintosh Allan R.
Published: April 2009

In the last two decades a revolutionary improvement has taken place in our understanding of the magnetic behavior of solids. A major contribution to this development has been made with the intense beams of neutrons now available from research reactors. Neutrons interact with magnetic systems through their magnetic moments; the energies, momenta and wavelengths of thermal neutrons correspond with those characteristic of solids. The changes in momentum and energy when a neutron is magnetically scattered in a solid therefore are readily measured, yielding information on magnetic structures and excitations that can not be obtained by other means.
Stanford group shows apparent evidence for quarks
Authors: Lubkin Gloria B.
Published: April 2009

After twelve years of effort, William Fairbank and his collaborators believe they have found evidence for fractional charge on two levitated niobium balls. His collaborators are George LaRue, who is writing his PhD thesis at Stanford University on the Millikan oil-drop type experiment, and Arthur Hebard (now at Bell Labs), who also wrote a PhD thesis on the Stanford experiment. They reported their results in a postdeadline paper given before a packed room at the Washington meeting of The American Physical Society. The announcement caused great interest and excitement. Many are adopting a “wait and see” attitude, but it is clear that the Stanford experimenters have given a great deal of attention to eliminating sources of error.
Anglo–Australian team observes Vela pulsar optically
Authors: Rothenberg Marian S.
Published: April 2009

Astronomers at the Anglo–Australian Telescope have observed flashing optical light from the Vela pulsar, PSR 0833-45. They detected very faint double pulses, with the same period as the radio pulsar, in measurements with the new 3.9-meter telescope near Coonabarabran, Australia. With an apparent time-averaged magnitude of about 25.2, the pulsar is the faintest object ever detected photoelectrically. (The only other pulsar yet detected optically, the Crab, has a magnitude of 17.0.) Among the many faint stars known to be within the region of the pulsar, the observers at the AAT have tentatively identified one as the most likely candidate to be PSR 0833-45. The participants in the measurements were Pat Wallace, Bruce Peterson, Paul Murdin, John Danziger (all from the Anglo–Australian Observatory, Epping, New South Wales), Richard Manchester, Andrew Lyne, Miller Goss (all from CSIRO Division of Radiophysics, Epping), Graham Smith, Mike Disney, Kent Hartley, Derek Jones and Gordon Wellgate (all from the Royal Greenwich Observatory, UK). This group was the first to use a recently completed determination of the pulsar radio position.
Electron storage ring from Cornell synchrotron?
Authors: Rothenberg Marian S.
Published: April 2009

If Congress approves President Carter's science budget, Cornell University will proceed with plans to convert the Wilson Laboratory synchrotron facility into an electron storage ring. The President's budget includes an NSF request for funds to build the storage ring (known as CESR); design and prototype stages are already well advanced. The storage ring is to be housed in the synchrotron tunnel, and—in a novel injection scheme—the synchrotron itself injects electrons into the ring. Maximum design luminosity is 1032/cm2 sec at about 8 GeV, so that the efficient operating range for CESR lies between that of existing storage rings (SPEAR at Stanford and DORIS at DESY) and the PETRA and PEP rings now under construction. Both SPEAR and DORIS have maximum beam energies of about 4 GeV, whereas PEP and PETRA are to have maximum luminosity at energies of about 15 GeV. In the range 4 GeV–8 GeV, the CESR design calls for four times the luminosity of the higher-energy rings. This is a particularly important consideration because, in storage rings, all experimental areas must operate at the same energy at any one time, and colliding-beam experiments can take several months, even at high luminosities.
Legislating the Nation's science business
Authors: McCormack The Honorable Mike
Published: April 2009

I serve as a member of a small minority in the Congress: those Members of Congress who read this magazine; those who have—or had—science-related occupations or educational backgrounds in their non-political “other” lives. Of the 535 Members of the 95th Congress, only six have indicated in their biographies that their previous occupation was in science, while ten more have backgrounds or education in engineering or medicine.
What physicists can do in Washington
Authors: Nierenberg William A.
Published: April 2009

The history of physicists in Washington is now well into its fourth phase. During World War I the interaction between science and government seemed to be on an individual basis; when I was a beginning graduate student at Columbia, I appreciated the fact that many of my professors had served as naval officers in the war, many of them in areas involving mine warfare. Of course scientific input was wider, but it did not have the organized structure that we are accustomed to today. The pattern was that of a physicist in uniform.
Four years of Congressional Science Fellows
Authors: Scribner Richard A. , Shoaf Mary L.
Published: April 2009

Five years ago this spring, The American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science selected their first Congressional Science Fellows. At the same time, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers had its first Fellow already working with the Congress, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers was selecting its first Fellow.
Resonance electron spectroscopy detects single atoms
Authors: Lubkin Gloria B.
Published: April 2009

A group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory reports that by means of the new technique of resonance ionization spectroscopy they have observed single atoms of cesium. They say that one atom in an environment of 1019 atoms or molecules of another kind can be measured with their method, and they do not believe this to be a limit. In subsequent experiments, the group has observed density fluctuations of atoms, absolute photodissociation cross sections, time-resolved diffusion and chemical reaction of atoms, and the detection of cesium atoms from the spontaneous fission of californium nuclei.
Second “back bend” helps explain nuclear band crossing
Authors: Leuchtag H. Richard
Published: April 2009

A kink discovered in a curve describing the behavior of the moment of inertia of a nucleus at high angular momentum is providing a new clue to nuclear structure. The unusual behavior was found by making measurements on nuclei with spins as high as 32ℏ in an experiment done by a group at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and reported in the 20 June 1977 Physical Review Letters. The members of the group are I-Yang Lee, Marie-Madeleine Aleonard, Marie-Agnes Deleplanque, Youssef El-Masri, John Newton, Reinhard Simon, Richard Diamond and Frank Stephens.
Lambert: self-taught physicist
Authors: Jaki Stanley L.
Published: April 2009

He was a physicist (Lambert's cosine law in optics, for example); a mathematician; a cosmologist (Did he anticipate the black holes of today?); but above all Johann Heinrich Lambert was a logician. “He… examined with the same rules the most trivial incidents of domestic life as well as the problems and demonstrations of science. A hole in his stocking made him conjure up a syllogism…, the leg of a chair prompted him to construct a hypothesis… All things presented themselves to his mind in the garment of logic…” Thus one colleague portrayed Lambert, the bicentennial of whose death is being commemorated this month. Another contemporary described him as a “dissertation-machine”—and even Lambert himself once referred to his head as a machine.
Interstitial compounds
Authors: Bennett Lawrence H. , McAlister Archie J. , Watson Richard E.
Published: April 2009

The field of interstitial compounds is a mature one, with an enormous literature. Nevertheless, a question as fundamental as the nature of their electronic structure remains a topic for lively (sometimes acrimonious) debate today. Moreover, industry has yet to tap more than a few of the myriad technical possibilities of these materials. The most commonly exploited property is their great hardness: tons of the interstitial compound tungsten carbide are produced annually for use in grinding and cutting tools. But other properties have seen little commercial application as yet. To cite a few: as a class, they are refractory, yet metallic, and they often have abnormally low work functions, making them excellent electron emitters. This combination suggests, for example, utility as magnetohydrodynamic channel electrodes. Some interstitial compounds, such as NbN, are superconducting, with transition temperatures second only to such champions as Nb3Sn. Tungsten carbide and related compounds are moderately good catalysts, able to operate in chemically hostile environments, as may be encountered, for example, in fuel cells. Many are respectable ferro- and antiferromagnets. As we will try to indicate, this class of compounds poses fascinating possibilities for the technologist and real challenges for the researcher.
Consulting for fun and profit
Authors: Goodman Clark
Published: April 2009

Those of us who started science careers during the Great Depression appreciate the financial difficulties young physicists face today. We are also aware of the generation gap and the pitfalls of gratuitous advice. However, we can tell you how it was and what we did to make ends meet—way back when.
NAS panel is concerned over atmospheric CO2 buildup
Authors: Bennett Floyd C.
Published: April 2009

A major buildup in atmospheric carbon dioxide could increase average global temperatures by as much as 6 °C over the next century or two; this is the chief problem associated with continued worldwide dependence on fossil fuels, according to a panel on energy and climate convened by the National Academy of Sciences. The effects of such a climatic change, throwing the Earth's habitable surface back to conditions that prevailed in the Mesozoic Era, probably would include a shift of the agricultural and fishing zones toward the poles and destabilization of those semi-arid regions now considered marginal for human occupancy. The panel has recommended extensive further study of the energy-climate relationship, a tremendous interdisciplinary research effort and new institutions to deal with the problem. Physicists may be able to contribute to meeting the CO2 threat through development of improved theoretical models and more precise determination of numerous measurements needed for accurate climatic predictions.
The Tevatron
Authors: Wilson Robert R.
Published: April 2009

Superconductivity is a magic potion, an elixir to rejuvenate old accelerators and open new vistas for the future. The property of zero resistance to the flow of electrical current will allow us at Fermilab to double the energy of the proton accelerator from 500 to 1000 GeV, will make possible colliding-beam experiments with center-of-mass energies up to 2000 GeV, will quite possibly lead to the discovery of the intermediate vector bosons, will save millions of dollars in our electrical bill—and all this at modest cost. The magic of superconductivity need not be confined to accelerators; it may be a key factor in conserving our dwindling energy resources when similarly applied to the production and transmission of electrical power.
The nuclear fuel cycle: an appraisal
Authors:   Study Group on Nuclear Fuel Cycles and Waste Management
Published: April 2009

For all LWR fuel-cycle options, safe and reliable management of nuclear waste and control of radioactive effluents can be accomplished with technologies that either exist or involve straightforward extension of existing capabilities. However, technical choices, including those for geologic waste disposal, require further delineation of regulatory policies. For normal operation of all fuel-cycle options studied, potential radiation exposures from either wastes or effluents do not appear to limit deployment of nuclear power.

 On 25 April at the Washington meeting of The American Physical Society, the principal conclusions and recommendations of a year-long study of nuclear fuel cycles and waste management were released. The study group consisted of a dozen physicists, chemists, engineers and geologists; it was chaired by L. Charles Hebel of the Xerox Corporation and reported through the APS Panel on Public Affairs and a review committee consisting of Hans Frauenfelder (chairman), Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky, Theodore L. Cairns and M. Gene Simmons. The study was financed by the National Science Foundation.
Evidence grows for charged heavy lepton at 1.8–2.0 GeV
Authors: Lubkin Gloria B.
Published: April 2009

Early in 1975 Martin Perl and his collaborators at SLAC observed anomalous production of an electron–muon pair in electron–positron annihilation. At the time (PHYSICS TOOAY, October l975, page 17) the group thought they could be observing a heavy lepton, a heavy meson or an elementary boson. By now, the returns from four additional detectors are in. The detector groups reported their results at the International Symposium on Lepton and Photon Interactions at High Energies held in Hamburg late in August. All the groups believe the most likely explanation for the anomalous events is a charged heavy lepton, now called the “tau,” a pointlike particle with mass 1.8–2.0 GeV. The heavy lepton would join its lighter siblings—the electron, muon, electron neutrino and muon neutrino. Presumably the τ would also have its own neutrino. The particle is called τ because it appears to be the third charged lepton to be found, and the Greek word for third begins with τ.
Energetic oxygen ions stream up to magnetosphere
Authors: Flanagan William A.
Published: April 2009

It has been generally believed that essentially all of the hot (0.1 to 50 keV) plasma ions and most of the more energetic Van Allen radiation belt ions contained within the Earth's magnetic field (the magnetosphere) originated on the Sun and were protons and a few percent helium ions. Now it has been discovered from satellite measurements that energetic (0.5–16 keV) oxygen ions that originate in the Earth's cold (eV) ionosphere are a major component of the hot plasma trapped in wide regions of the radiation belts during geomagnetic storms. These new findings, along with observations with the same instrument of energetic (keV) oxygen ions and protons streaming upward from the ionosphere into the magnetosphere, have stimulated a major reassessment of the physical processes responsible for the injection, acceleration, transport, and loss of the hot magnetospheric plasma.
Stellar disk suggests planet formation
Authors: Lubkin Gloria B.
Published: April 2009

A group of astronomers from Steward Observatory of the University of Arizona and NASA-Ames Research Center have found evidence for a central star surrounded by a disk seen face on, a surrounding HII region and circumstellar dust. They feel that they have presented “the first substantial case for a newly formed star with a preplanetary disk.” In fact, the group feels that the object, MWC 349, in the constellation Cygnus, may contain a planet or planets in formation.
Infrared detectors
Authors: Levinstein Henry
Published: April 2009

Infrared radiation has been studied with detectors of one kind or another since about 1800. The difference between the techniques of the first century-and-a-half and the period since World War II is that the earlier devices were thermal detectors, responding to temperature change caused by integrated absorption of energy, while the more recent devices are true photon detectors. In the latter type, interaction of individual photons (above a certain threshold energy) with the solid detector results directly in electron emission or charge-carrier excitation.
Microchannel plates
Authors: Leskovar Branko
Published: April 2009

For more than forty years researchers have applied the phenomenon of photoemission to convert absorbed incident radiation into an electron stream, which is then amplified by a secondary-emission process. The resulting fast high-gain photon detectors, such as photomultipliers and electron multipliers, are among the fastest and most sensitive devices for recording the collision of a photon (or electron, atom or energetic ion) with a target surface. These detectors have gained wide acceptance in research instrumentation, particularly in mass spectroscopy and scintillation spectroscopy, as well as in optical ranging and optical communication systems. Recently a new—faster, less noisy and more efficient—type of radiation detector has been developed, consisting of a plate traversed by a large number of microscopic channels that serve as electron multipliers.
Accelerator technique improves radioisotope dating
Authors: Rothenberg Marian S.
Published: April 2009

Stimulated largely by recent developments in archaeology and the environmental sciences, physical scientists have been giving a good deal of attention to the practical problem of getting better carbon-14 dates. One particular area of renewed interest is the use of a mass spectrometer to separate the radioactive C14 from other carbon isotopes. The C14 content could then be measured directly, rather than by counting decays as is done now. The difficulty has been that conventional mass spectrometers are not sufficiently sensitive to detect the small percentages of C14 present in typical samples: The C14/C12 ratio ranges from 1.2×10−12/l in contemporary biological samples down to about 3×10−16/l in samples older than 70 000 years or so.
Two magnets set records for field intensity
Authors: Levi Barbara G.
Published: April 2009

A record for the most intense continuous magnetic field was set in February by a 254-kG solenoid and then surpassed in July by a 301-kG solenoid. Both magnets were hybrids built at MIT's Francis Bitter National Magnet Laboratory (NML). The designs were described at the 6th International Conference on Magnet Technology at Bratislava in August by the magnets' developers—Mathias J. Leupold, Robert J. Weggel and Yukikazu Iwasa, all of NML. A hybrid magnet consists of a large superconducting coil surrounding a compact water-cooled coil. The concept was proposed in 1965 by D. Bruce Montgomery of NML and Martin Wood of Oxford, as a method for efficiently generating a large magnetic field without unduly reducing the volume available for experiments in the central cavity. (The inner bore of both record-setting magnets is 3.2 cm.)
Erratum
Authors: Amstutz G. C.
Published: April 2009

Michael Polanyi tells me that the photograph printed with my review of the book Science as a Cultural Force (PHYSICS TODAY, April, page 76) is not of him but of a relative, Thomas G. Polanyi.
Correction
Authors: Hurwitz Harlan Arthur
Published: April 2009

Unfortunately, due to an inexcusable error of exposition on my part, one of my thoughts was quite understandably misinterpreted in my letters in August (page 70). I refer to the last sentence in the second paragraph, in which I wrote: “But if the court were to presume to instruct the public—ex cathedra, as it were—then it would indeed be foolishly taken in by its false infallibility.” I meant that the court should not delude itself as to its mission or function; not, as the sentence was subsequently edited to demonstrate, that the public would be misled under such circumstances.

Interestingly, both statements are certainly true, in that the infectious assumption of false infallibility would doubtlessly spread from the court to the public in general, because of the former's authority.
Corrections
Authors: Landon R. Ned , Elioff Tom
Published: April 2009

The March issue (page 45) states that H. Tracy Hall “began working at General Electric's Research and Development Center in 1948 and served as director of research, 1955–67.”

The reference to “director of research” apparently was meant to apply to a position held by Hall at Brigham Young University after he resigned his position at General Electric in August 1955.

C. Guy Suits served as General Electric vice-president and director of research, and as head of the General Electric Research Laboratory, from 1945 until his retirement in 1965. Since that time Arthur M. Bueche has been GE vice-president for research and development, a position that includes responsibility for directing the work of the General Electric Research and Development Center, successor organization to the former Research Laboratory and Advanced Technology Laboratories.

A somewhat misleading statement with regard to the PEP Project appeared in the March issue (page 20), “in-brief” heading, paragraph 2, line 4:

“…ERDA has approved a $28-million contract for the design and construction of housing for research equipment.”

Although less brief for “in brief,” a more accurate statement would be:

“…ERDA has approved a $28-million contract for the design and construction of the PEP conventional facilities. This includes all sitework, the main tunnels for the storage ring-magnet systems (≈1.4 miles in circumference), electrical and mechanical utilities, technical support buildings, and interaction halls (experimental areas) for colliding-beam experiments.”
Strong shock waves
Authors: Gross Robert A.
Published: April 2009

To put strong shock-wave research in perspective it is appropriate to recall its origins. In 1848, Stokes and Challis observed that simple soundwave theory will break down when the disturbance amplitude becomes large. Subsequent work by Earnshaw, Riemann, Rankine, and Hugoniot placed the early theory of large-amplitude gas dynamic waves, or shock waves, on a firm theoretical basis. Laboratory experiments with shock waves began about 1899 with the work of Vielle. About 1900, detonations and explosion research by Chapman and jouguet revealed that supersonic propagation of combustion waves have shock-like behavior. From that time on, basic research in physics, chemistry, mathematics, and aerodynamics has accelerated our state of understanding of shock waves, and the scope of this research field now encompasses nearly all of physics.
Pilgrims' progress in search of the fundamental constants
Authors: DuMond Jesse W. M.
Published: April 2009

The practice of making broadly inclusive surveys, from time to time, of the status of our knowledge of the fundamental constants of physics and chemistry may be said to have started with a famous paper by Raymond T. Birge, of Berkeley, published in Reviews of Modem Physics in 1929. To Professor Birge, also, is due the credit for being the first, as far as I know, to apply the method of least squares in order to determine most probable values of three of the constants; e, the electronic charge m, the electron rest mass; and h, Planck's constant, using a highly overdetermined set of experimental data on functions of these three quantities.