Abstracts of Technical Articles from Bell System Sources 



The Renaissance of Physics.^ Karl K. Darrow. Intended for 

 the general public, this book is chiefly a story of some of the great 

 discoveries and some of the grand general principles achieved or con- 

 firmed in physics since the century began. The title is an allusion 

 to this period, for, to quote from the beginning of the book: "ever 

 since the turn of the century physics has been enjoying a veritable 

 renaissance, fairly to be likened with that splendid flowering of the 

 arts and humane letters four hundred years ago to which the name of 

 Renaissance was first applied. In this contemporary age when the 

 artists in so many fields are overshadowed by the work of masters long 

 since dead, the physicist has had the glorious good fortune of sharing 

 in a spirit, an ambition, a sense of novelty and limitless opportunity, 

 such as (we are told) inspired the Elizabethans." 



The chapter headings run: Physics and the Physicist — Intimations of 

 Electricity — Release of Electrons from Matter — Through Measuring to 

 Knowing — Magnets and Moving Charges — The Atom Visible — Light 

 in the Semblance of Waves — Mystery of Waves and Corpuscles — Structure 

 of the Atom — Technique of Transmutation — Victory over the Elements — 

 Unity of Nature. 



There are forty-five illustrations, many of them half-tones of ap- 

 paratus, spectra of various kinds, and processes of transmutation. No 

 previous knowledge of physics is required of the reader, and the use of 

 mathematics is confined to a few formulae of the simplest algebraical 

 type. Much of the content of the book figured in the course of Lowell 

 Lectures delivered by the author in Boston during the autumn of 1935. 



Gutta-Percha — Effect of Vulcanization of its X-Ray Diagram} C. S. 

 Fuller. The finding of previous investigators that gutta-percha and 

 balata have identical x-ray patterns is verified. Experiments on the 

 x-ray behavior of vulcanized and unvulcanized gutta-percha show that 

 vulcanization (to the extent carried out here) has no effect in changing 

 the lattice plane spacings of either the alpha or beta crystal modifica- 

 tions. Vulcanization does appear to increase the degree of orientation 

 of the crystallites present in these substances as produced by stretching 



' Published by Macmillan Company, New York, N. Y., September, 1936. 

 - Indus, and Engg. Chem., August, 1936. 



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