Industrial Research 



355 



ity, and their properties in this connection may be 

 destined to render them of considerable utility hi bio- 

 physical research, as well as in biophysical industrial 

 application. 



These are but a few of the consequences for industry 

 and for industrial medicine, cited merely as examples 

 of the investigations of the biophysicist into the reac- 

 tion of radiations and living thmgs. The entire field is 

 relatively new, and the number of workers therein is at 

 present so meager as to imply that the most important 

 results remain for future workers to produce. The en- 

 couragement of further research in such fields, and the 

 provision of adequate facilities for training in it can 

 hardly fail to j-ield large returns. 



We may turn for a moment to the consideration of 

 some of the more striking individual contributions, 

 direct and indirect, which biophysics has made to 

 industry. One of the greatest single contributions has 

 been the development of extremely sensitive measuring 

 devices for following reactions in processes involving 

 plant or animal products and their adaptation to indus- 

 tr3^ Conspicuous among these have been potentio- 

 metric devices, "pH meters" developed for laboratory 

 use and fm-ther adapted to large-scale industrial 

 operation. Alany products wliich are prepared on a 

 large scale, notabh^ in the food industry, change in 

 conductivity during the operation, and specific conduc- 

 tivity can be used as a measure of the finishing of the 

 product. For such opei'ations physical devices which 

 will give nearly continuous readings of specific conduc- 

 tivity are of immense value as indicators, and are widely 

 used. An interestmg application of tliis sort is to be 

 found in the standard manufacture of tomato ketchup 

 and of fruit juices in the food industry. Photoelectric 

 devices play a very important part industrially in many 

 of the biological industries whose activities include pro- 

 cesses where colorimetric indicators are required. They 

 are particularlj- widely used m the food industries in 

 the standardizing of colored products, and in the textile 

 manufactures. Spectrophotometric apparatus is a 

 vital part of research, control, and production equip- 

 ment in very many industries where color is an impor- 

 tant characteristic of the goods manufactured. Densito- 

 meters find a somewhat similar use in the biological 

 industries, being designed especially for the delicate 

 measurement of quantities of light absorbed in different 

 materials. An instrument of very recent design which 

 is of particular use m the biological industries is the 

 so-called "color analyzer," wliich is a special type of 

 spectrophotometer designed to reproduce the absorption 

 curve of colored substances throughout the visible 

 spectrum. 



Equipment for the observation of reactions at abnor- 

 mally high and abnormally low pressures repre- 

 sents an important contribution of the physicist to the 



biological industries. Many important biological re- 

 actions, especially in tlio food industries, will readily 

 take place at abnormal pressures which cannot be 

 carried out under atmospheric conditions. 



The tcclmique of centrifugiug and ultracentrifuging 

 are nearly vital to the food and pharmaceutical indus- 

 tries, and equipment of this sort represents a very 

 important contribution of biophysics on the side of 

 instrumentation. Ordinary centrifuges find much use 

 in processes of separation, precipitation of solid from 

 liquid materials, and the breaking of emulsions. Ultra- 

 centrifuges find their principal biological use in the 

 separation of sera, viruses, and hormones, and in the 

 separation of various other mixtures of molecules of 

 high molecular weight. Filtration equipment is equally 

 important to the biological industries in the separation 

 of particles of differing sizes of a somewhat larger size 

 range. Recently the techniques of biophysics have 

 supplied some new and radical filter designs of greatly 

 improved utility, notably a filter manufactured from 

 sections across bundles of tuiy glass tubes cemented 



Figure 101. — Six-Plate Centrifugal Molecular Fractionating 

 Still in Operation. Distillation Products, Incorporated, 

 Rocliester, New York. (Subsidiary of General Mills, Incor- 

 porated, and Eastman Kodak Company) 



321So5— 41- 



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