Word: vapor
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...discovery of methanelike compounds on Mars, Kaplan believes, leaves only one important obstacle to life on the red planet: the apparent lack of water in liquid form. What little Martian water there is exists as polar-cap frost or vapor in the atmosphere; there are no oceans or even lakes similar to those in which the first terrestrial life evolved. "It would be a strenuous climate for life," says Kaplan, "but then not all life-even on earth-requires liquid water...
Rainbow of Colors. To measure this tiny quantity-less than a millionth of the energy needed to split the nucleus of an atom-the scientists devised an ingenious technique. Light from a 200-watt mercury vapor lamp was focused on a diffraction grating, which, like a prism, broke up the beam into its constituent rainbow of colors, its separate wave lengths of light. By rotating the grating to a carefully calculated angle, the scientists were able to reflect light of a single, specific wave length at a target. Knowing the wave length, they were able to determine precisely the energy...
Like a raffish, somewhat questionable stranger at a bar, this raffish, somewhat questionable book glibly rattles off all sorts of odd and fascinating facts about the manufacture and use of liquor. The word "spirits" was originally applied to the alcohol vapor created during the distillation process. The "proof" of any whisky is equal to double the amount of alcohol it contains; 100 proof means 50% alcohol by volume, the other half being distilled water, coloring and the like. "Proof" originally was a place where gunpowder was tested. Early distillers adopted the term, because they used powder to gauge the strength...
Perner was not the first to use osmic-acid vapor. Others had tried it without success. Undismayed when exposing pea cells to the vapor for two months failed to produce results, Perner doggedly lengthened the experiment to nine months and finally got his pictures. "My greatest achievement," he says, "was that I was patient...
...Ostlund's preliminary findings are confirmed by further tests, hurricane fighters may have to take a new approach to their job. Instead of seeding clouds to deprive the big storms of energy from atmospheric water vapor, as planned for next year's Project Storm Fury, they may have to find ways to isolate the hurricanes from their principal source of energy, the sea. One suggestion advanced at the Miami meeting: to cover large areas of the sea in the vicinity of a hurricane with a thin chemical layer-perhaps of fatty alcohols-that would prevent evaporation and keep...