摘要:

The basic problems of controlled fusion are well known. Briefly they are the following: first, with deuterium or a deuterium‐tritium mixture, to produce a pure low‐density plasma of exceedingly high temperature (several hundred million degrees Kelvin—i.e., several tens of thousands of electron volts); second, to confine this plasma adequately and stably by means of an appropriate magnetic field configuration for a sufficiently long time that an appreciable fraction of the nuclei can undergo fusion; and finally, to capture the energy released and harness it for useful purposes.

ISSN:0031-9228    

DOI:10.1063/1.3051465

出版商:AIP    

年代:1964

数据来源: AIP

摘要:

One afternoon recently Professor David Lazarus of the University of Illinois packed his bag, including slides and notes on his research, drove to the Chicago Airport, flew to Dayton, Ohio, and was met at that airport by Professor David F. Griffing of Miami University. For the following two days Dr. Lazarus was a visitor to the Miami Physics Department under the auspices of the Visiting Scientists Program in Physics, sponsored jointly by the American Association of Physics Teachers and the American Institute of Physics with the support of the National Science Foundation. He reports that the staff of the department and their exceptionally large number of physics majors kept him steadily “on the go”, and that the visit was “a fine and rewarding experience”. The department's report states that they found their visitor helpful, stimulating, and enjoyable, and that the informal discussions with the physics students were a tremendous success.

ISSN:0031-9228    

DOI:10.1063/1.3051466

出版商:AIP    

年代:1964

数据来源: AIP

摘要:

Symmetry and invariance considerations, and even conservation laws, played undoubtedly an important role in the thinking of the early physicists, such as Galileo and Newton, and probably even before then. However, these considerations were not thought to be particularly important and were articulated only rarely. Newton's equations were not formulated in any special coordinate system and thus left all directions and all points in space equivalent. They were invariant under rotations and displacements, as we now say. The same applies to his gravitational law. There was little point in emphasizing this fact, and in conjuring up the possibility of laws of nature which show a lower symmetry. As to the conservation laws, the energy law was useful and was instinctively recognized in mechanics even before Galileo. The momentum and angular‐momentum conservation theorems in their full generality were not very useful even though, in the special case of central motion, they are one of Kepler's laws. Most books on mechanics, written around the turn of the century and even later, do not mention the general theorem of the conservation of angular momentum. It must have been known quite generally because those dealing with the three‐body problem, where it is useful, write it down as a matter of course. However, people did not pay very much attention to it.

ISSN:0031-9228    

DOI:10.1063/1.3051467

出版商:AIP    

年代:1964

数据来源: AIP

摘要:

As science grows, its demands on our society's resources grow. It seems inevitable that science's demands will eventually be limited by what society can allocate to it. We shall then have to make choices. These choices are of two kinds. We shall have to choose among different, often incommensurable, fields of science—between, for example, high‐energy physics and oceanography or between molecular biology and science of metals. We shall also have to choose among the different institutions that receive support for science from the government—among universities, governmental laboratories, and industry. The first choice I call scientific choice; the second, institutional choice. My purpose is to suggest criteria for making scientific choices—to formulate a scale of values which might help establish priorities among scientific fields whose only common characteristic is that they all derive support from the government.

ISSN:0031-9228    

DOI:10.1063/1.3051468

出版商:AIP    

年代:1964

数据来源: AIP

摘要:

Pleasant fall weather added to the high spirits and congeniality of a group of physicists and chemists attending a symposium on molecular excitons as guests of duPont's Central Research Department. Their common interest in excitons had attracted participants from academic and research institutions across the country, and from Canada as well. Welcoming the visitors, Central Research Director P. L. Salzberg announced that the symposium marked the belated dedication of the site of the meeting, duPont's newly constructed Physical Research Building.

ISSN:0031-9228    

DOI:10.1063/1.3051469

出版商:AIP    

年代:1964

数据来源: AIP

摘要:

“Messrs. Presidents, Mr. Sawyer, Mr. Barton, distinguished guests: To me has been allotted the privilege of introducing someone who needs no introduction, and justifying a prizegiving that needs no justification. This I have accepted because it is such a pleasure to speak of Harry Barton and his distinguished career. About two thousand years ago one Quintus Horatius Flaccus, otherwise known as Horace, said ‘exegi monumentum aere perennius’—I have made a monument more enduring than bronze. He was speaking of his poetry, and he was right; but most poets could not say this truly of their poems. There must have been millions of poets whose poems did not outlast themselves, let alone bronze. If you want to make something more enduring than bronze, it is a much better bet to found an institution. That is what Harry Barton was doing, nearly a third of a century ago. If you will go to Twenty‐third Street and Fifth Avenue you will see a remarkable building which for many years was as much the emblem of New York as the Empire State Building is today. It is the Flatiron Building. Go to the north of it and look back at its north apex, and let your eyes travel up to the fifteenth floor. You will then be gazing at the windows behind which Harry Barton organized the Institute.” [Aside to H. A. B.:]“Yes, Harry, I know that you have told me that your very first office was elsewhere, but forget it and never speak of it again; the story is much nicer if it starts in the Flatiron.” “In his office he sat, at first alone, then with one secretary, then with more secretaries, then with Madeline Mitchell: and Harry will not begrudge it if I take twenty seconds of his time to say that those of us who remember Madeline Mitchell will always hold her in loving and grateful memory. With Madeline Mitchell and John Tate, Harry started the publication by the Institute of the great journals of American physics; and he was doing other things as well. For instance, he was interpreting physics to the press. Also and for years, he was doing something which now seems supererogatory: he was promoting applied physics, that is to say, he was persuading industry to employ physicists. When I think of that I imagine children on a beach. They are working like beavers, carrying water in buckets from the ocean up to a pool in the rocks that they want to fill: and suddenly the tide roars in, and fills every pool in sight a hundred times over, and the children have to scamper for their lives. The only thing wrong with this analogy is that the Institute did not scamper for its life. The Institute mounted upon the crest of the tide, for this was the tide that in the words of Shakespeare leads on to fortune. It would be idle to pretend that the Institute would now be what it is, but for that tide in the affairs of men which started to rise about 1940 and has not even yet begun to ebb. On the other hand we must never forget that the Institute, with Harry Barton as its captain, stimulated the tide. There was a feed‐back, with the tide lifting the Institute and the Institute amplifying the tide. This suggests that we should liken Harry to the moon, but this is too delicate a simile to manipulate tactfully in so short a time. We might just call him, in the language of the Rubaiyat, ‘the moon of our delight’; and let it go at that. Now I should like just to enumerate the things that the Institute is doing now: but if I were to do that I should take all of my time, and all the time of Ralph Sawyer, and all the time of Harry Barton, and all the time of Robert Oppenheimer, and still I should not finish. The Institute is interested in the past, for it is promoting a project for the history of American physics. The Institute is interested in the present, for look at us here. Here we sit peacefully in the eye of a hurricane, and the hurricane is the 1964 Annual Meeting of these two Societies, and the hurricane is completely under control because the Institute is controlling it, otherwise there would be chaos. And the Institute is interested in the future, in ways so numerous that as I just said I cannot even enumerate them without stealing the whole of the evening. Let us anyhow look at its budget. In one week the Institute spends as much toward the advancement of physics as Harry Barton spent in his first fifteen months. Let us compare the verbiage it now prints with the verbiage it printed in 1932—oh no no, let's not, this is a happy occasion, let us keep it so. Anyway my watch tells me that it is now time to go back to the first of October, 1931. That was the date when the Institute was founded, and the first of October is a crucial date in my life also, for on that date many years earlier I entered the University of Chicago. Some years later I mounted on a platform together with my classmates, and a dean spoke to us in the Latin language, and then he presented us in Latin to the President of the University, who was also a Harry: Harry Pratt Judson. Harry Pratt Judson spoke to me in Latin, and then he handed me a diploma (but not a check). I thought it was wonderful, and I still think that Latin is the very noblest language in which to perform a ceremony. And accordingly therefore, I now repay to Harry Barton my debt to Harry Pratt Judson. Surge, Henrice, et veni mecum ad Ralph Sawyer: Ralph Sawyer: ad te adduco Henricum Barton, conditorem Instituti Physicae Americani, ut a manibus tuis, coram uxore et filiabus et magna multitudine amicorum suorum praemium Comptonianum benemeritum accipiat, quia ille per nos omnes et per omnes generationes futuras in saecula saeculorum, Institutum aere perennius aedificavit.”

ISSN:0031-9228    

DOI:10.1063/1.3051471

出版商:AIP    

年代:1964

数据来源: AIP

摘要:

“Mr. President, Dr. Sawyer, Dr. Darrow, Members and Guests: Until this evening it has been manifestly correct to believe implicitly every word uttered by Dr. Darrow. Now it is clear that even he can be guilty of looking at the record through rose tinted glasses. You must surely realize that in the present instance he has done so. Certainly I often did not succeed in doing what ought to have been done and I did not always perform in the way desired by the Governing Board and the Member Societies. Indeed there were several occasions when I wondered how much longer I was likely to remain in office!

ISSN:0031-9228    

DOI:10.1063/1.3051472

出版商:AIP    

年代:1964

数据来源: AIP

摘要:

During the Joint Ceremonial Session of the American Association of Physics Teachers and the American Physical Society on January 23, the Oersted Medal of the AAPT was conferred upon Walter Michels of Bryn Mawr College.

ISSN:0031-9228    

DOI:10.1063/1.3051474

出版商:AIP    

年代:1964

数据来源: AIP

摘要:

Edward U. Condon has assumed the presidency of the American Association of Physics Teachers. Dr. Condon has recently been appointed professor of physics in the University of Colorado's Department of Physics and Astrophysics and fellow of the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics, which the University operates in cooperation with the National Bureau of Standards.

ISSN:0031-9228    

DOI:10.1063/1.3051476

出版商:AIP    

年代:1964

数据来源: AIP

ISSN:0031-9228    

DOI:10.1063/1.3051478

出版商:AIP    

年代:1964

数据来源: AIP