Abstract
LONDON. Royal Society, June 5.—Sir Richard Paget The nature and artificial production of consonant sounds. Human speech appears to be essentially a branch of human gesture which the ear has learnt to identify, without the aid of sight, by means of its secondary effect in modifying the resonance produced by air by or through the gesticulating members of the vocal cavity. Thus, the laughter sound, Ha, Ha! is essentially a smile, made audible and emphatic by the sudden passage of vibrating air. Acoustic observations confirm this view, and indicate that speech is essentially a specialised form of facial expression. P. L. Kapitza: A method of producing strong magnetic fields. An accumulator, which gives a power of the order of iooo kw. for a small fraction of a second, and time-switches for making and interrupting strong currents up to 12,000 amp., are described. An account is given of a high-frequency oscillogaph (20-30,000 per sec.) for measuring strong currents occurring during a small fraction of a second. The construction and measurement of the magnetic constant of coils for producing magnetic fields is discussed. N. Ahmad and E. C. Stoner: On the absorption and scattering of 7-rays. The results of previously reported experiments on the absorption of 7-rays from radium B + C, after filtration through i cm. lead, are further analysed, and the scattering is estimated from the apparent absorption with the absorbers close to and away from the ionisation chamber. The corrected total atomic absorption is given by, = I 92 × 1025Z + 160 × 10312Z (where Z is the atomic number), with close approximation, over a wide range of elements. The scattering per electron is approximately constant, which supports the view that the first term in the above expression corresponds to scattering absorption, the second to true absorption. Estimates of the mean effective wave-length based on the two terms indicate that, for a given wave-length, Comptons mono-electronic quantum scattering formuke give values, both for the total scattering absorption and for the actual scattering, which are lower than those observed. V. Henri and H. de Làszlà: The analysis of the absorption spectrum of naphthalene vapour: structure and activation of the molecule of naphthalene. There is a change in the absorption spectrum of a vapour on approaching high frequencies. For low frequencies we obtain narrow bands with a fine structure. After a first limit the bands become continuous without fine structure; after a second, we get broad continuous bands. The first limit indicates an intra-molecular change in distribution of electrons; the second corresponds to ionisation of the molecule. For naphthalene, the first limit of “intramolecular ionisation” corresponds to an increase of energy of ioi,ooo cal. gm./mol., the second, “ionisation of the molecule,” to 230,000 cal. gm./mol. The absorption spectrum of naphthalene vapour consists of two groups of bands: A, 2820-2500 A, narrow continuous bands; B, 3200-2820 A, narrow bands with fine structure. There are more than 400 fine bands in this group. The distribution of the bands of group B can be represented by a single formula with three fundamental atomic frequencies: a =474 4, /3 =203 4, y =62.7 cm.—. The main frequency is about half that of benzene and its mono derivatives. This frequency appears to correspond to the vibrations of the two benzene nuclei in the molecule of naphthalene. The fine structure of the band is represented by the sum of three series, corresponding to a positive, negative and zero branch. The moment of inertia of the naphthalene molecule changes on activation.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Societies and Academies. Nature 113, 878–880 (1924). https://doi.org/10.1038/113878a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/113878a0