PHYSICS, PROGRESS OF, IN 1900. 



567 



liese enterprises would be a good element in paci- 

 fication, and it was recommended that the opera- 

 tion of the law of Congress to establish civil gov- 

 ernment be not postponed until the complete sup- 

 pression of all insurrection, but only until, in the 

 President's opinion, civil government may be safely 

 established. In the first public legislative session 

 of the Philippine Commission $2,000,000 in silver 

 were voted for the construction of roads and 

 bridges, $5,000 for the preliminary survey of the 

 proposed railroad from Dagupan to Benguet, and 

 "5,400 for schools. 



A strong peace party, called the Federals, was 

 jrganized among the Filipinos. They favored the 

 ioption by the natives of the Protestant religion, 

 id later another party, the Conservatives, also 

 favor of peace and American sovereignty, was 

 armed to represent the views of the native priests, 

 ad to voice the hope of ultimate national inde- 

 endence after a period of American rule and 

 itelage. The problem of the friars, which led to 

 le original rebellion against Spanish authority, 

 pas the one that agitated the Filipinos most. The 

 riar was the embodiment of all authority, govern- 

 mental as well as religious, in his locality. The 

 rebels expelled the friars from their places, and 

 A he Filipinos were generally opposed to allowing 

 Jem to return. Immorality was one of the 

 3imds of complaint, and instances were proved, 

 it this was not the principal one. The Augustin- 

 ms, the Dominicans, the Franciscans, and the 

 ecolletos are owners of 403,000 acres of culti- 

 ited ground, besides which they have large sums 

 ' money to loan. The United States engaged to 

 protect them in their possessions in the treaty 

 with Spain. They had transferred their property 

 to others, but the transfers are not genuine and 

 they remain the owners. The commission recom- 

 mends that their estates be purchased for public 

 lands out of the island revenues, by condemnation 

 if necessary, though the orders have expressed a 

 willingness to sell at a satisfactory price. The 

 secular clergy is composed mainly of Filipinos, 

 while the monks are mostly Spaniards. The im- 

 portant cures have been filled by these monks, 

 and the commissioners would like to see Amer- 

 ican priests sent to the islands to take their place. 

 The commission enacted a law when the insur- 

 rection had subsided declaring persons ineligible 

 to public office who were found in arms against 

 the United States authority after March 1, 1901, 

 or who aided or abetted insurrectionists. Sites 

 for penal settlements and for a leper colony were 

 found in the southern islands. 



PHYSICS, PROGRESS OF, IN 1900. Con- 

 stitution and Properties of Matter. Inorganic 

 Life. Guillaume (Archives des Sciences, Febru- 

 ary) notes that certain physical processes have 

 close analogies in physiology, and may be regarded 

 as constituting an elementary form of life. Among 

 such processes are fatigue and adaptation to im- 

 pressed forces. An instance of the latter is the 

 hardening of a metal at the point of impending 

 rupture, which may be termed an instance of pro- 

 tective modification. Similarly the gray iodide or 

 chloride of silver in the Becquerel process of color 

 photography assumes the color of the incident 

 light, and thus enables itself to reflect it. If it 

 did not do that it would have to absorb the radia- 

 tion, and the energy so absorbed would have the 

 effect of reducing the silver salt. 



Matter and EiJier. Sagnac (Comptes Rendus, 

 Nov. 20. 1899) shows that Fizeau's effect, in which 

 the ether is apparently dragged along by a column 

 of water in motion, consists of two opposite effects 

 the mass effect, which, owing to the diminution 

 by its motion of the useful mass of water traversed 



by the ray, produces an apparent dragging of the 

 ether, and the motion effect, which is the same 

 as if the cylinder containing the water moved with 

 respect to the source, without any water entering 

 or leaving it. The whole effect is a retardation in 

 the time 01 propagation. Kelvin (Philosophical 

 Magazine, August) has solved mathematically two 

 problems relating to the motion of matter through 

 the ether, namely, to find the orbit of an ether 

 particle disturbed by a moving atom and the path 

 traced through an atom (supposed fixed) while the 

 ether moves uniformly in parallel lines. In a sub- 

 sequent paper (ibid., September) he shows that 

 gravity may be explained by supposing the posi- 

 tive electron to condense ether in its neighborhood 

 and the negative electron to rarefy it. 



Size of Molecules. Gerstmann (German Phys- 

 ical Society, Oct. 20, 1899) has tried to estimate 

 the size of molecules by determining the heat of 

 solution of a nonelectrolytic substance in a 

 liquid when the former is taken (1) in a lump, 

 (2) in a finely powdered condition, and also the 

 heat absorbed on mixing two such solutions of dif- 

 ferent concentrations. He used a special modifi- 

 cation of Bunsen's calorimeter, but so far has 

 attained no other result than that the two heats 

 of solution differ from each other. Jiiger (Vienna 

 Academy) calculates the sizes of the ions, or elec- 

 tric carriers in an electrolyte, from the specific 

 resistance, on the assumption that this resistance 

 is entirely due to viscosity. He also assumes that 

 the ions are spheres, that anion and cation have 

 equal diameters, and that the density of the elec- 

 trolyte is the true density of the material. For 

 potassium chloride he finds d = 66 X 10~ 9 centime- 

 tres, while according to the kinetic theory of gases 

 d = 96 X 10~ 9 centimetres for chlorine alone. (See 

 also Electrification, under ELECTRICITY, below.) 



Molecular Motion. Exner (Annalen der Physik, 

 August) has studied the velocity of particles in 

 so-called Brownian motion, using gum dissolved 

 in alcohol and precipitated by water. At a tem- 

 perature of 23, particles 0.0004 millimetre in di- 

 ameter were found to move with a speed of 0.0038 

 millimetre a second; those 0.0009 millimetre in 

 diameter, 0.0033 millimetre a second ; and those 

 0.0013 in diameter, 0.0027 millimetre a second. 

 The velocity increased slightly with temperature, 

 and it appeared that motion would cease at 20 

 C. rather than at the absolute zero. The author 

 believes the motion to be connected with that of 

 the liquid molecules, although this is about 100,000 

 times greater. 



Gravity. Sterneck (Vienna Academy Sitzungs- 

 berichte, 108, 1899) has made observations in mines 

 in Bohemia and Carniola whose results seem to in- 

 dicate that a downward increase in temperature 

 tends to be associated with an increase in gravity. 



Mechanics. Strength of Materials. Guest 

 (Philosophical Magazine, July), in an investiga- 

 tion of the strength of ductile materials under 

 combined stress, subjected steel, copper, and brass 

 tubes to twisting, tension, and internal pressure, 

 and to various combinations of these. The maxi- 

 mum principal strain was found to be greatest 

 in the simple tension experiments and least either 

 in the torsion tests or when the axial and cir- 

 cumferential tensions are equal. The principal 

 practical conclusion is that a specific shearing 

 stress is a necessary condition for the initial yield 

 of a uniform ductile material. 



Elasticity. Schaefer (German Physical Society, 

 2, p. 11, 1900) has investigated the elasticity of 

 metals at temperatures as low as the boiling point 

 of liquid air (186 C.). He finds that the lateral 

 contraction of wires increases with the tempera- 

 ture; that the greater the thermal coefficient of 



