Abstract
IN his Friday evening discourse at the Royal Institution on May 13, Mr. J. M. Wordie described “An Expedition to North-West Greenland and the Canadian Arctic”. The objects of the expedition were in part geological, in part archæological, but in the main to investigate cosmic ray intensity near the north geomagnetic pole by means of free floating balloons. The expedition sailed from Leith at the end of June, 1937. The cosmic ray observations were undertaken at various points in West and North-West Greenland, and six flights altogether were made. Two different types of apparatus were in use, one designed by Mr. E. G. Dymond which consisted of a triple-co incidence Geiger counter set with wireless transmission of the counts and the barometric pressure, the other constructed by Dr. H. Carmichael consisting of a miniature ionization chamber with electroscope and a small camera which photographed the latter at work and at the same time recorded the temperature and atmospheric pressure. [Some of the results obtained are described by Mr. Dymond and Dr. Car-michael on p. 910 of this issue.] The greatest height reached from which a successful record was obtained was a little above 17 miles. In addition pilot balloons for testing the upper air currents were flown on twenty-eight occasions to heights in many cases of nearly 20 miles. From Thule in North-West Greenland the ship proceeded through Smith Sound to Kane Basin, and archæological investigations were made at a long abandoned Eskimo site at Buchanan Bay, Ellesmere Land, and continued in Jones Sound on North Devon Island. On the return journey the ship touched at North-East Baffin Land, which was found to be a region of long fjords which penetrate a glaciated mountain country south-westwards into hill country of low relief.
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Expedition to Greenland and the Canadian Arctic. Nature 141, 931–932 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/141931d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/141931d0