Word: infra
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Walter R. Miles, after long and thoughtful scratching of their scientific noses, presented the National Academy of Sciences with a brand-new theory. The nose, they said, is not, as commonly believed, a laboratory which identifies odors by chemical analysis. More likely, its smeller is an instrument or measuring infra-red (heat) rays absorbed by odorous vapors...
...long been known that many gases and vapors transparent to visible light absorb certain wavelengths of infra-red This fact is used industrially in identifying gases; chemists shoot infra-red rays through a vapor and note what wavelengths are absorbed, and how strongly. Why, reasoned Beck & Miles, should the numan nose not do the same...
Body Broadcasts. They collected data on vapors and discovered that all those studied which have odors can absorb certain bands of infra-red with waves between 7½ and 14 microns long. Vapors without odors do not absorb these wave lengths. Since the human body at normal temperature radiates heat waves chiefly m the 7½-14 band, it looked as if the ability to absorb heat waves on the "body's broadcast frequency" is what makes vapors smellable...
Vapor Blends. Human beings are harder to test. Their smelling apparatus is deeply buried in the upper nasal passages, where it cannot be blocked off from the vapors by heat-transparent barriers. Beck & Miles hope to lick this problem somehow when they get an infra-red spectrometer for studying the wavelength of fragrances...
Here's some of the equipment that fills the Medical Room: there whirlpool baths, two needle baths, one sitz bath, ten radiant heat lamps of various wattage, three infra-red lamps, one ultraviolet lamp, one microtherm, two shortwave diathermes, two long-wave diathermes, and an x-ray machine capable of producing a finished film in something like three minutes. This machine, one of the few college field house x-ray units in captivity, stands loaded during all games to determine fractures...