Science: Chemists

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Selective breeding of plants that will grow out of the tropics, such as the wild guayule shrub of Texas and Mexico was recommended to U. S. manufacturers now endangered by Britain's rubber monopoly. Guayule does not contain rubber as latex (milky sap) but as small particles among its fibres. The shrub must be cut down and pulverized to extract these particles, less than a pound to each bush. None the less, President George H. Carnahan of the Continental Rubber Co., showed that guayule plantations totaling only 1,000 sq. mi. would supply 25% of this country's annual crude rubber requirements. Californians are planting guayule.

Intra-Atomic Energy. If matter could be sent out of existence and made to reappear as energy, unlimited power would be on tap. Instead of one royal phenomenon like radium, there would be a grand democracy of matter in which the homeliest substances would lie ready to perform potent miracles. It would be something for nothing with a vengeance. In his presidential address, Dr. James F. Norris of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Society's chief, dwelt upon this subject most optimistically. The initial energy required to alter atomic arrangements and in so doing release new energy of high intensity has been found in the X-ray tube. Synthetic fuels and lighting gases might be but one result, on a modest scale. Sugar from formaldehyde is already another. The economic implications of the power to transmute base metals would be tremendous. The identification and destruction of specific disease molecules are not unthinkable.

Hottest Flame. Dr. Irving Langmuir of the General Electric Company described his discovery of a flame hotter than hydrogen burning in oxygen (oxy-hydrogen). He made atomic hydrogen burn in an atmosphere of molecular hydrogen. His hydrogen blowtorch melted tungsten wire like an icicle, indicating that its heat was at least 7,000° F. Playing on a sheet of chrome steel the flame left molten pools behind it. Significance: steel girders could be welded silently instead of noisily riveted;* the welds would not (as when an oxyhydrogen flame is used) be oxidized and thus weakened, they would be annealing instead. This is important in joining aluminum, magnesium and other light metals.) Alloy metals, too refractory to work with by present methods, could be used for building, thus conserving the world's iron ore.