Skip Nav Destination
Issues
August 1985
ISSN 0031-9228
EISSN 1945-0699
Guest Comment
Letters
Search and Discovery
Articles
Soft‐X‐Ray Microscopes
Physics Today 38 (8), 22–32 (1985);
https://doi.org/10.1063/1.880983
Major developments in sources, optics and detectors for soft x rays promise to help biologists realize the longstanding goal of high‐resolution imaging of biological materials in their natural, even living, state.
Acoustic Microscopy
Physics Today 38 (8), 34–42 (1985);
https://doi.org/10.1063/1.880984
Electroacoustical transducers and acoustic lenses work at megahertz frequencies as “miniature sonar systems,” forming high‐resolution images that show properties not seen in optical micrographs.
Natural Engines
Physics Today 38 (8), 50–58 (1985);
https://doi.org/10.1063/1.880985
‘Taconis oscillations,’ the oscillations of some variable stars, and a novel form of engine are all based on cycles that involve an intrinsically irreversible process and a broken thermodynamic symmetry.
Washington Reports
Physics Community
Books
James Clerk Maxwell: A Biography and The Demon in the Aether: The Life of James Clerk Maxwell
Physics Today 38 (8), 66–67 (1985);
https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2814668
Solid Clues: Quantum Physics, Molecular Biology, and the Future of Science
Physics Today 38 (8), 67–68 (1985);
https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2814669
Fusion: An Introduction to the Physics and Technology of Magnetic Confinement Fusion
Physics Today 38 (8), 70–72 (1985);
https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2814671
News from APS
Editorial
Buyers Guide
France’s Oppenheimer
William Sweet
Making qubits from magnetic molecules
Stephen Hill
Learning to see gravitational lenses
Sebastian Fernandez-Mulligan