Environment : a magazine of science

Front matter - Volume 4 (2) 1937 - Environment

2015-04-30T14:50:51+10:00

Issued once each term, by Edgar H. Booth University of Sydney.

Analysing the Stars

2015-04-30T14:50:51+10:00

It was possibly in a rash moment that the French philosopher Comte once remarked: "There are some things of which the human race must remain forever in ignorance; for example, the chemical composition of the heavenly bodies". Today it is possible to detect iron in the flames of the sun with just as much certainty as one can detect common salt in sea water. Analysis, one of a number of important phases of chemical investigation, involves finding the answer to two questions : What are the constituents present in the substance under investigation, and how much of each! For example, you might say to an analyst, here is a piece of beef steak ; does it contain sodium sulphite, and if so, how much! It is a relatively simple matter to carry out tests for the presence of sodium sulphite, i.e. to make a qualitative analysis.

What We Mean by Force and Pressure

2015-04-30T14:50:51+10:00

A popular word is frequently so popular that it is received with open arms, or rather with open mouth and open ears, when really it should not be present at all in the company of those words with which it is associated on that particular occasion to form a sentence. The scientist, even when talking lightly and brightly (and even flippantly), should be very careful of the words he employs; so he likes to have all the words he intends to use regularly for scientific purposes carefully defined to have only one meaning. This article is about what we may popularly term "pushes" and "pulls" - both really quite good words, because we use them so frequently that we know what to expect when we push a thing or pull it. If you simply pull a free object, you expect generally that it will move towards you; and if you push it, you expect it to move away from you. Scientists prefer to use the word "force" when dealing with this action. We apply a force to a body, and, if the body be free to move, it will move in the direction of the force.

A Visiting Scientist

2015-04-30T14:50:51+10:00

Arrangements have been made for a public lecture to be delivered by Dr. H. S. W. Massey (Independent Lecturer in Mathematical Physics, Queen's University, Belfast) in the Physics School, The University of Sydney, at 8 p.m. on Thursday, August 26. His subject will be "The Modern Study of the Atom". Dr. Massey is an Australian, and one of Melbourne's most distinguished graduates ; he is the joint author (with Mott) of the monograph on "The Theory of Atomic Collisions " in the series of "International Monographs in Physics " (Oxford University Press).

Common Water

2015-04-30T14:50:52+10:00

There is quite a lot of water in the world, either moving or lying on its surface, or soaked a little way into it, or in the air above it. There is so much of it about that we generally find it rather uninteresting, and do not consider that, so far as we are concerned, it is the most important chemical compound (or perhaps mixture of chemical compounds) in the universe. Just to touch on the physiological side first of all. We live as human beings because our frames carry a multiplicity of muscles, the so-called " meat " of animals, those engines which are capable of carrying on work within the body, and of enabling the body to do work external to itself; even whilst you lie back with your eyes closed listening to the rain, even if you drop right off to sleep, a vast number of little engines are consuming fuel within your body and keeping you alive. No one of these engines can use anything but liquid fuel, and the liquid fuel is produced by mixing other chemicals, either solid or liquid, with water, and effecting some chemical changes with a loss of potential energy which you utilise; and so you live.

Ballistics or Throwing Things

2015-04-30T14:52:19+10:00

There is a distinction between chucking and throwing: when you chuck a thing away you discard it as being valueless, the word "chuck" being quite a good dictionary word with that meaning; when you " throw " something, you are interested at least in the direction of your throw, if not also in the distance to which you will throw it. You might, of course, also be interested in direction in the act of chucking - you could say, "I'll chuck that in the garbage bin " - but you would hardly stand back and indulge in careful target practice to throw it into the bin from a distance unless your sporting instinct were strongly developed - or the garbage tin contents strongly developed.

The Historical Development of Science

2015-04-30T14:53:06+10:00

Provided that you have a good knowledge of our present beliefs with regard to the layer of gas surrounding our world, and which we call the atmosphere, it is very interesting to go away back into the past and read about the funny ideas held on the subject by our remote ancestors, and quite profitable to see how we have gradually arrived at the ideas which we have today.

Medical Treatment by X-Rays and Other Radiation

2015-04-30T14:54:16+10:00

When you are subjected to radiation, for medical purposes, the radiations are applied for one of two reasons : either that the practitioner may through you, or that he may do work (that is, expend energy) on the surface of your body or on more deeply-seated zones. If he be employing X-rays to see through you, he may cast X-ray shadows of varying density on to a fluorescent screen so that light rays similarly varying in intensity are passed on to his eyes, and he interprets the shadows in terms of those normal or abnormal contents of your body that are casting the shadows; or he may cause the X-ray shadows to be cast on a suitable photographic plate, where the energy of the X-rays is absorbed by the plate emulsion, so that on development he can observe the relative absorption of the X-rays by different portions of the intervened body.

Public Examinations

2015-04-30T14:50:52+10:00

By permission of the Department of Education, further reports of the examiners in Science subjects in the Leaving Certificate and Intermediate Certificate examinations are published in this magazine, so as to make them available to teachers and students during the current year, prior to the publication of the official handbook of the Department.