Issues
Articles
The teapot effect…a problem
Markus Reiner teaches applied mechanics at the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, or the “Technion” as it is also known. By profession a civil engineer, he has worked as such for a whole lifetime—“doing science,” he explains, “as a hobby.” When Prof. Bingham of Lafayette College, Easton, Pa., learned about his work, he invited him to do research there, and Prof. Reiner spent two years (1931–1933) at Lafayette as research professor, cooperating with Bingham in the establishment of rheology as a new branch of physics. He is now head of Technion's rheological laboratory, where he treats concrete as a liquid and air as a solid. He has recently designed and built a centripetal airpump based on the fact that, as foreseen by Maxwell, air can be considered as a viscoelastic solid with a time of relaxation of about seconds.
Physics then and now
An after‐dinner address presented before the American Physical Society, March 16, 1956, Pittsburgh, Pa. A former president of the Society, Dr. Foote is now serving as Chairman of the Engineering Section of the National Academy of Sciences and as head of the National Research Council's advisory committee to the Army's Office of Ordnance Research in Washington, D.C.
Mathematics at NBS…a policy committee report
The following is taken from a report of the Policy Committee for Mathematics, one of the Technical Advisory Committees to the National Bureau of Standards established in response to recommendations of the 1953 ad hoc committee (“the Kelly Committee”) which was asked to evaluate the Bureau's functions and operations in relation to the national needs. Part of the duty of the Policy Committee is to report to the Director of NBS on the operation of the Bureau's Mathematics Division, which includes the Numerical Analysis Section, the Computation Laboratory, the Statistical Engineering Laboratory, and the Mathematical Physics Section, and part of it is to keep mathematicians and physicists aware of the Bureau's activities in the area of mathematics and in touch with its needs and problems. Committee members are: Mina Rees (Chairman), David Blackwell, E. U. Condon, Mark Kac, Philip M. Morse, A. H. Taub. They were nominated by the mathematical societies and by the Physical Society. Their report to NBS Director A. V. Astin was submitted on March 15, 1956.