Word: masons
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Cool Droplets. In Scientific American, Cloud Physicist B. J. Mason of London's Imperial College of Science and Technology tells of experiments made to determine why some clouds give rain while others float high in the air until they evaporate. When he carefully cooled small droplets of very pure water, they did not turn to ice until the temperature fell below - 42° F. This proved, as had been suspected, that ice crystals seldom, if ever, form in moderately cold clouds unless some solid nucleus is present to start the process...
...Mason's next step was to cool droplets containing microscopic nuclei made of substances that are common in powder-fine dust blown up from the earth's surface. A few kinds proved almost as effective as silver iodide smoke, but most required very low temperatures before they could turn cold clouds into snow...
Trained Dust. In further experiments, Mason showed that some kinds of common natural dust can be "trained" to collect ice. Particles of kaolinite (common in clays) do not act as ice-forming nuclei above 16° F., which is colder than the tops of many clouds. But when kaolinite particles have once had ice crystals on them, and when this ice has evaporated, they are able to form fresh crystals in clouds no colder than...
...Mason suspects that kaolinite and other "trainable" particles are carried up to 35,000 ft., where the temperature often falls to -60° F. There they gather a little ice, forming thin, veil-like cirrus clouds. When they fall through dry air, most of the ice evaporates, but tiny bits remain trapped in crevices. When these ice-seeded particles get mixed with a moderately cold cloud, they make it yield snow or rain. Mason argues that much of the earth's precipitation is wrung out of clouds by just such "trainable" earth-dust particles. Kaolinite and other kinds...
...selling, at first tried to cut into the lucrative moonshine market by selling Georgia Moon in the usual narrow-necked bottles (Brown-Forman also puts out a narrow-necked corn). But it had little success in bucking the ingrained habits of shine drinkers, who like to drink out of Mason jars, the South's traditional moonshine container. After dickering with the Treasury, Viking got permission last month to put its corn likker into Mason-jar fifths (retail price: $3.50 to $4.50, depending on the state, v. about $4 for a quart jar of moonshine), has watched its sales suddenly...