Word: geologist
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...determining melting points of iron (and all other substances that increase in volume as they melt), scientists have long used Lindemann's Law, a complicated mathematical formula describing the relationship between the melting temperature of a substance and the pressure upon it. But Geologist Kennedy was disturbed by the widely varying and apparently inaccurate results obtained when the law was applied at higher pressures. He decided that something was wrong...
...Yugoslav Geologist Bozidar Djordjevitch had an ingenious idea. Every spring, he said, water from melting snow pours into Yugoslavia's Karst caves, compressing air that whistles out through vents in the earth's surface. Why not seal the caves and funnel the escaping air to gas turbines, which could convert it into useful energy? Djordjevitch soon had an answer: the caves are vented in too many places; they are almost impossible to seal...
Pumping Water Up. Geologist Martini already had evidence that his scheme would work. There was no doubt that compressed air could be stored underground; it is often used for testing the sealing of caverns that many nations use to store natural gas. In addition, off-peak-hour electricity is already used to pump water up into a reservoir above the level of a water-driven turbine. During hours of peak demand, the water is released to flow down against the blades of the turbine, which drives an electric generator...
Residents of Anchorage, Alaska, saw a dramatic demonstration of that strange phenomenon during the disastrous 1964 earthquake, says Columbia University Geologist Paul Kerr, whose investigation is described in the current issue of Scientific American. While probing beneath the battered sand, gravel and silt surface of Anchorage during the past two summers, Kerr studied an underlying layer of quick clay from 10 to 30 ft. thick. During the three minutes of the quake's violent up-and-down jolting, he concluded, some of the quick clay under Anchorage turned into liquid, triggering the damaging landslides that literally floated large sections...
Mother Lode. Geologist McNair made his discovery last summer after sighting a distinctive rock ledge on remote Victoria Island in the Canadian arctic. Clearly visible on the surface of the Pre-Cambrian rock, which had somehow escaped the disturbances of mountain building and the pressures of overlying rock, were the fossilized tracks of burrowing, wormlike animals -an encouraging indication that more fossils might be near by. Says McNair: "I knew how gold prospectors felt when they stumbled across the mother lode." Splitting open the rock, he found the remains of 47 primitive, clamlike brachi-opods that radioisotope dating proved...