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Stanley thus gave a crystal-clear answer to the question: What is TMV? Electron micrographs showed thin rod-shaped crystals, little more than a hundred-thousandth of an inch long. This answer raised an intriguing new question. Is a virus animate or inanimate, living or dead, animal or mineral? Dr. Stanley's way out of the dilemma is to broaden the definition of "living'' to include any particles that are capable of reproducing or replicating themselves. That covers viruses...
...structure of matter. Using a beam of high-energy electrons from Stanford's linear accelerator as a sort of microscope, he and a team of assistants proved that protons and neutrons, which form the bulk of matter, are dense at their centers, cloudlike outside and only one forty-thousandth of a billionth of an inch in diameter. Later research taught Hofstadter that protons, which have positive charges, and neutrons, which are electrically neutral, are similar in structure. The main difference is that the negative cores of neutrons balance out the positive charge on the outside...
...half an inch, the steel crib on which a missile rests will not fit correctly. Says a project engineer: "Our assembly line stretches from San Diego, Calif., to Plattsburgh, N.Y., and when everything comes together at the proper time, the fit has to be exact, sometimes down to a thousandth of an inch. It's a more difficult design and construction challenge than building the missiles themselves...
...past, plasma formed by magnetic squeezing and heating of heavy hydrogen was too unstable to reach and maintain the high temperature necessary for a thermonuclear reaction. By using only two of Toy Top's three stages, said Post, plasma was confined in a "magnetic bottle" for one-thousandth of a second at a temperature of 40 million degrees centigrade. Post hopes that by using the Top's three stages, he can double the temperature and keep the plasma confined for five-thousandths of a second, thus duplicating in his laboratory the thermonuclear reaction...
...least have come increasingly to distrust the beautifully precise examination scores--drawn out to a thousandth of a per cent--which I think do violence to the complexity of knowledge and the mystery of character," wrote President Jordan in 1943. Miss Ballou, if she did not wholly share his skepticism, put it partially into practice. On the College Boards, she emphasized, "We do not expect the same performance from all candidates ... we 'think down' the scores of those girls whose schools have primed them for this variety of test-taking. Conversely, we 'think up' the results achieved by girls...