Word: plastics
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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WRITING: "The news writer is an artist. In its simplest terms, art is the business of selecting for effect-plus skill. The writer is the creative manipulator of the most plastic, the most resistant, the most mercurial and yet the stickiest substance known to man-the written word...
...earth is generally considered a slightly flattened sphere, its flatness at the poles resulting from plastic response to its spinning motion. Last week Dr. John A. O'Keefe, assistant director of the Theoretical Division of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, gave evidence before the American Physical Society that the earth is very slightly pear shaped. If its continents are evened out and its spin-flattening allowed for, it has a faint bulge around the North Pole, a faint depression around the South Pole, and a depressed ring in the north mid-latitudes (see diagram...
...earth. The excess of gravitation around the North Pole, for instance, indicates an extra 200-ft. bulge of rock over an area equivalent to the Atlantic Ocean. This extra mass would attract enough sea water to raise sea level about 50 ft. above the theoretical curve of an ideally plastic earth. None of the newfound bulges are large compared to the polar spin-flattening (about 13 miles), but they may cast new light on the earth's mysterious interior...
Some unknown force must support the bulges, which could not exist if the earth were a simple, spinning mass of plastic material. One possibility: the earth's mantle (the 1,800-mile layer below the crust) may not be as plastic as has been thought. It may have mechanical strength, like brickwork, that keeps the earth out of shape. Another possibility: the bulges are supported by slow currents in the mantle, which push up the surface like massive bubbles in a spring...
...giving instructions to the 16-year-old sitter, the lady of the house forgot one thing -that she had sprayed some of the bathroom equipment with a white plastic "miracle" paint, the kind that "won't rub off, peel, chip or blister. It stays...