Archive for October, 2006

Ice Concrete 1927

ICE CONCRETEâ€”This is the name of a new, porous, astonishingly light building material invented in Finland. Like ordinary concrete, it is composed of cement and sand. Crusht ice or snow is used during the process of mixing. Says Waldemar Kaempffert in the New York Times:
Heat evaporates the water of the melting ice, and the result [...]

Golf Psychology 1927

Psychology is spreading like a weed. It has even invaded the golf courses, we are told by The British Medical Journal (London). The latest example is a small volume on mental handicaps in golf, by Dr. T. B. Hyslop, who is not only an enthusiastic golfer, but also an entertaining writer. Says The Journal:
Before we [...]

Pons-Winnecke comet visit 1927

OUR VISITING COMET
CLOSER TO THE EARTH than any comet except one is known to have come before, the Pons-Winnecke comet was only 3,500,000 miles away from us on June 27, about fourteen and a half times as far as the moon, and far closer than any other astronomical body ordinarily comes. But despite this neighborly [...]

Thoughts on Carbon from 1927

CARBON: THE LIFE ELEMENT
IN A BOOK RECENTLY PUBLISHED in Paris on “Carbon, Combustion and Its Chemical Laws,” Henry Le Chatelier, one of the world’s greatest experts on this subject, sums up part of his recent lectures on Mineral Chemistry at the Sorbonne, which Henry de Varigny, writing in the Journal des Debats (Paris), tells us [...]

Benefits of Laughter 1927

GOOD EFFECTS PRODUCED BY LAUGHTER and cataloged in an article by Dr. Welsh in Medical Life are thus quoted in the “General Topics” section of American Medicine (New York). We read:
It is one of the most natural things in the world. Yet how many physicians are there who insist that their patients must laugh heartily [...]

Greater Knowledge of Water Required 1927

WATER A CHEMICAL MYSTERY
Water, our very commonest material, is one of the great mysteries of modern chemistry, according to Dean James Kendall, of New York University, as quoted in Chemicals (New York). He says:
“Because water is so universal in our own small part of the universe, we take it for granted that we know all [...]

Knowledge of the Planet Jupiter 1927

THE GIANT OF THE PLANETS
THE LATEST ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERIES and opinions regarding the great planet Jupiter are briefly gathered in a leaflet issued by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (San Francisco). In it, E. C. Slipher, of the Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Arizona, tells us that Jupiter’s claim on our interest is not so much because [...]

Waterspouts vs Whirlwinds 1927

FALSE WATERSPOUTSâ€”A true waterspoutâ€”in other words, a tornado over a body of waterâ€”is a vortex in the atmosphere that in all cases forms at the cloud-level and works downward, says Charles Fitzhugh Talman, in his Science Service feature, “Why the Weather?” (Washington). As soon as the vortex reaches the water, the latter becomes violently agitated, [...]