Word: watt
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...fight crime on the ground. Cruising 20 hours a day in helicopters above the city of Lakewood (pop. 67,000), near Long Beach, the officers kept a particular watch for an ingenious new type of alarm beacon mounted atop homes and stores. The 1,000-watt beacons, visible five miles in daylight and twelve at night, light up either manually or automatically to signal break-ins or holdups. Within 21 minutes at most, the sheriff's men expect to swoop down on the scene, spot suspects with powerful floodlights, direct approaching earth-bound cops or, if necessary, land...
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...
...what to do about it." This news was attributed to "anonymous students," but in fact its source was a letter Stephen Potter had written to the CRIMSON the week before. In the letter he explained that students living in Leverett Towers never bothered to turn off the three 150-watt spotlights with which the rooms were equipped because they didn't have to pay the electric bill. On the basis of a three-week personal survey of Leverett lighting habits, Potter wrote, he had calculated that wasted electricity cost the University $10,000 a year, "enough for full tuition scholarships...
Weeks later, Buildings and Grounds replaced all the 150-watt bulbs with 75-watt lights, which is the way they have stayed ever since. (President Pusey, speaking at Leverett soon after the change, reportedly told his audience, "You can ask me about anything--except the lighting situation.") "We never intended anything like it," Potter's creators say now. They think that the loss of bright lighting on the curtained windows "spoiled the look of the Towers...
When ten irate students showed up at Danang's spanking-new 1,000-watt transmitter, an official readily turned over the microphones. "Why not?" he asked quietly. "It's a community station...