摘要:

In this third annual meeting of the Corporate Associates, we are continuing a general theme of communication among physicists, which was initiated at the first meeting. Physics has become such a versatile and powerful discipline in our modern society, and its practitioners are so widely dispersed in academic institutions, in government, and in industry, that some lack of a complete understanding of the role and impact of physics and physicists is plausible.

ISSN:0031-9228    

DOI:10.1063/1.3057455

出版商:AIP    

年代:1961

数据来源: AIP

摘要:

I have been uncertain about the position I should take in our discussion this afternoon. The American Institute of Physics has sponsored this gathering. My persuasive friends, Dr. Suits and Dr. Hutchisson, who induced me to take part, have long been articulate spokesmen for the role of physics in modern engineering. In the light of my own interests, they might reasonably anticipate that I would support that cause. However, I have felt increasingly of late that the need to interpret the engineer to the physicist is even more pressing. This meeting today with our Corporate Associates seems an appropriate occasion to begin. The central theme of our conference is, in fact, the question as to how physics and engineering each may contribute best to the advancement of a free society. At one time or another, I have had a serious professional interest in both fields. But I shall speak to you today from the vantage point of one whose deepest concern for a number of years has been with education.

ISSN:0031-9228    

DOI:10.1063/1.3057456

出版商:AIP    

年代:1961

数据来源: AIP

摘要:

These days there is a strong coupling between science and technology, between physics and engineering, and we tend to forget that this coupling in our free society is relatively recent. Going back to the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century, one finds that science and technology—and today in this room it is physics and engineering—were two independent activities. The industrial revolution of the eighteenth century occurred without the benefit of science. We had in the eighteenth century a metallurgical industry, we had the steam engine, we had other complex (complex for those days) industrial activities, and they had their own independent intellectual dynamics. Science also had its own independent drive, motivation, and creativity. Science—physics—does enter into the picture as we examine the events of the nineteenth century. Watt invented and produced a workable steam engine, but the whole science of thermodynamics—the first law, the second law, the Carnot cycle—became part of our scientific structure much later in the nineteenth century. These scientific concepts then became the basis of further improvement of the steam engine, the internal combustion engine, the new sources of power in that century. Thus we see an example where, first, an inventor comes up with a useful concept for industry and where its further development and its further utilization then depend on creative work in science. This role of physics, I think, characterizes the nineteenth century.

ISSN:0031-9228    

DOI:10.1063/1.3057457

出版商:AIP    

年代:1961

数据来源: AIP

摘要:

How shall the universities of our free society meet the demand for quality and quantity in the scientific training of the next generation? That question has been well denned for our consideration by Julius Stratton. In the assignment of the next two speakers to the function of representing the interest of industry and of the public, respectively, there is just the barest hint that there might be an adversity of interest here. Since I have brought this possibility out in the open, I should assure you at once of my conviction that what is good for the US is good for General Motors. Moreover, I am willing to go the distance with the former Secretary of Defense and declare that the same is true vice versa—necessarily so in the long run. But in the long run, as John Maynard Keynes once observed, we are all dead.

ISSN:0031-9228    

DOI:10.1063/1.3057458

出版商:AIP    

年代:1961

数据来源: AIP

摘要:

When asked to define or discuss something, we tend to start with several examples. When asked to speak about statesmanship in science, I find it difficult to get beyond the first example. To me, statesmanship in science is that quality that was possessed, in abundance, by K. T. Compton. I am tempted to recount those attributes and attitudes that characterized his distinguished career of service to science and to society. But K. T. would want us to take another direction, I am sure. He would want us to look not to the past but to the future.

ISSN:0031-9228    

DOI:10.1063/1.3057459

出版商:AIP    

年代:1961

数据来源: AIP

摘要:

The ideas that solids are composed of compact arrays of atoms, while gases are composed of atoms or molecules in very rapid translational motion, are so obvious that we accept them nowadays without question; in teaching textbooks they are stated as if they were axioms. In its most elementary form, without any sophisticated calculations about the distribution of velocities, with only the one assumption that the impacts of the molecules on the walls of the containing vessel produce the pressure, a very simple calculation gives the equationpv = 13mNc2wheremandNare the mass of a molecule and the number per unit volume, andcis a velocity;pis the pressure andVthe volume of the gas.

ISSN:0031-9228    

DOI:10.1063/1.3057460

出版商:AIP    

年代:1961

数据来源: AIP

摘要:

I have been asked by the Committee for the Second Fritz London Award to give an account of the life and work of this eminent recipient of the Award, Lev Davydovich Landau. I was very honored that I had been asked to undertake this task but felt rather overwhelmed by the responsibility it entailed. Because Landau has contributed to so many fields of physics, an award could have been made to him at any one of several conferences in any one of several fields. The main problem, I found, was to limit myself primarily to Landau's work in the field of low‐temperature physics for which this Award is made. My own work in this field has been so strongly influenced by these significant contributions that I, like so many of us similarly influenced, feel that I do know him, although I have never met him personally.

ISSN:0031-9228    

DOI:10.1063/1.3057461

出版商:AIP    

年代:1961

数据来源: AIP

摘要:

In the March 1960 issue ofPhysics Todaythere was a letter to the editor written by David Redfield of Fairview Park, Ohio. The first part of this letter reads as follows: “The symposium papers in the January issue ofPhysics Todaydeal with the role of the physicist in a number of industries. When considered together with other similar articles, they represent a widespread desire for more physicists to direct their efforts toward a multitude of related fields. In view, however, of a small number of physicists in this country (the first article in the same issue indicates that there are less than 20 000), these papers raise a question of paramount importance to physics and, ultimately, to these other fields as well, ‘What about physics?’ That is to say, if physicists shift into the many neighboring fields in response to the demands from these fields, who will be left to do physics?”

ISSN:0031-9228    

DOI:10.1063/1.3057462

出版商:AIP    

年代:1961

数据来源: AIP

摘要:

MORE than 3800 physicists gathered in New York City during the first four days in February to attend the 1961 annual joint meeting of the American Physical Society and the American Association of Physics Teachers. Many of that number found themselves stranded over the week end by the heavy snowfall which commenced a few hours before the joint banquet on February 3 and which temporarily disrupted both air and surface transportation out of the metropolitan area.

ISSN:0031-9228    

DOI:10.1063/1.3057463

出版商:AIP    

年代:1961

数据来源: AIP

ISSN:0031-9228    

DOI:10.1063/1.3057466

出版商:AIP    

年代:1961

数据来源: AIP