SECTION A PHYSICS OF MATTER 



(Hall 11, September 23, 10 a. w.) 



CHAIRMAN : PROFESSOR SAMUEL W. STRATTON, Director of the National Bureau 



of Standards, Washington. 

 SPEAKERS: PROFESSOR ARTHUR L. KIMBALL, Amherst College. 



PROFESSOR FRANCIS E. NIPHER, Washington University. 

 SECRETARY: PROFESSOR R. A. MILLIKAN, University of Chicago. 



THE RELATIONS OF THE SCIENCE OF PHYSICS OF 

 MATTER TO OTHER BRANCHES OF LEARNING 



BY ARTHUR LALANNE KIMBALL 



[Arthur Lalanne Kimball, Professor of Physics, Amherst College, b. October 16, 

 1856, Succasunna Plains, N. J. A.B. Princeton, 1881; Ph.D. Johns Hopkins 

 University, 1884; post-graduate, Johns Hopkins University; Associate Pro- 

 fessor of Physics, Johns Hopkins University, 1888-91; Fellow of American 

 Association for the Advancement of Science, and American Physical Society. 

 Author of Physical Properties of Gases.] 



IT is evident at the outset that it is quite out of the question, in 

 the time at our disposal, to discuss adequately the relation of the 

 physics of matter to the other sciences, even if the speaker were 

 endowed with the requisite omniscience. 



For matter is the very stuff in which the phenomena of all the 

 natural sciences are manifested, the chemist finds himself con- 

 fronted at every turn with physical relations which must be taken 

 into account, the astronomer finds his greatest triumph in exhibit- 

 ing the universe that he explores with the telescope as an harmonious 

 illustration of physical principles, the geologist also hardly faces a 

 single question that does not demand the aid of physics or chemistry 

 in its solution, and even in the biological sciences the laws of matter 

 still condition the phenomena of life. 



Perhaps a brief consideration of the interrelations of these sciences 

 may aid us in a clearer perception of their dependence on the physics 

 of matter. 



There are three sciences that may be said to be especially funda- 

 mental, in that they deal with the elements of the universe of phe- 

 nomena. These are physics, which, if we define it somewhat narrowly, 

 deals with all the phenomena that can be exhibited by and through 

 the means of any one kind of matter, as well as all interactions between 

 different kinds of matter in which each preserves its separate iden- 

 tity; chemistry, which has for its province those special phenomena 

 in which one kind of matter is broken up into two or more kinds, 



