FEBRUARY 1955

BUBBLE CHAMBER--"In their exploration of the submicroscopic world of atomic nuclei, physicists are like men groping in a dark cave with a flashlight. It would help if they had a better flashlight. Physical chemists have long known that in a clean, smooth-walled vessel a very pure liquid may be heated above its usual boiling point without boiling. I wondered whether a flying particle might, under suitable conditions, trigger the formation of the microscopic bubbles that start the boiling process. If so, it might make a visible track in superheated liquid.--Donald A. Glaser" [Editors' note: Glaser won the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention of the bubble chamber.]

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