Word: fragmentation
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...White Sands Missile Range, N. Mex., where swarms of smaller missiles are tested over solid land, recovery teams are kept consistently busy. Nearly every fragment of returning missiles is searched for and found. The wreckage dug out of alkali flats or mesquite thickets often tells more about a flight than any amount of telemetry could radio back to base. For this reason White Sands testing is preferred for correcting tough cases of missile misbehavior...
...oldtime, nontechnical methods are not neglected either. Missile-sniffing dogs are getting intensive training. A pair named Dingo and Count are being schooled to locate small missile fragments coated with paint mixed with squalene, a noisome extract of shark-liver oil. The dogs have already learned to ignore coyote and rabbit scents, and they can whiff a shark-flavored fragment half a mile downwind. Vernon Miller, chief of the range instrumentation division, thinks that the dog detectives will be over the research hump and busy at serious work within six months...
...sensitivity of the technique extends to one-billionth of a gram. It is a marvel at detecting the presence of poison, easily spotting a thimbleful dissolved in ten tank cars of water. Neutron analysis can get along with specimens far smaller than those needed for conventional chemical analysis: a fragment of lint, a strand of hair, a fleck of paint will suffice. Happily, the radioactivity caused by the neutrons soon dies down, and once studied, the evidence can safely be brought into a courtroom...
Cubism did away with Renaissance perspective, which, said Braque. "forces the objects in a picture to disappear away from the beholder instead of bringing them within his reach." It also confirmed something that men had always known but rarely recorded: that objects seen close up tend to dissolve, fragment and multiply. This fragmentation, said Braque, "helped me establish space and movement in space. I couldn't introduce the object until I had created space...
...biggest chunk is an 8-ft. by 10-ft. section of the tail. Yet the skilled crash detectives of the U.S. Government's Civil Aeronautics Board can identify and check every tiny fragment. Out of the grim jigsaw puzzle, they will slowly and carefully extract the "probable cause" of the accident. Then other 707s, forewarned and perhaps modified, may be saved from making plunging turns into disaster...