Word: langmuir
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Krick's method uses coke-burning generators which send silver-iodide particles skyward to increase precipitation. His theories of weather forecasting and rainmaking have been opposed by the U.S. Weather Bureau, Physicist Irving Langmuir, who started cloud seeding, and many another scientist...
Meteorologists have never been able to pin down a regular pattern in the weather, beyond the daily and annual cycles. But in late 1949, Rainmaker Irving Langmuir started releasing silver iodide particles in the skies over New Mexico on the same day each week. His idea was to see if this "weekliness" showed up in weather statistics gathered all over the country. According to a report in last week's Chemical and Engineering News, Langmuir is sure that...
...Mississippi and Ohio Valleys especially, he found that the rains fell in a strongly marked seven-day cycle. Variations in barometric pressure, humidity, temperature, etc., followed the same weekly schedule. Langmuir does not maintain that his silver iodide went all the way to Ohio. But he thinks that New Mexico is a "weather breeder" where weather developments begin and sweep off toward the east. In the past, these weather changes came at irregular intervals. During 1950 they were triggered once a week by silver iodide and so, says Langmuir, brought weekly rain to faraway Ohio...
...Irving Langmuir's ants need not have drowned [TIME, Aug. 28] had they realized the potentialities of jet propulsion. As a boy in western Washington, I used to toss large black ants into our quarry swimming hole. After a few preliminary struggles to orient themselves to the nearest shore, they would squirt a jet of formic acid from a convenient rear port and be shot six or eight inches nearer safety. Not being streamlined (and rudderless), these insects would re-aim and repeat the process until they were able to scramble out. Perhaps our Western ants are just smarter...
Your article on Meteorologists Langmuir and Schaefer neglected to mention that their work may result in another benefit ... to this part of the country...