Power Reactors
The goal of economic atomic power is still in the distance. To discover the best approach to it, the U. S. is building five separate types of experimental nuclear power stations
Features
Ice Islands in the Arctic
In 1946 an Air Force plane north of Alaska discovered a single floe covering 200 square miles. Now parties land on these huge floating platforms to study the Arctic and how to survive in it...
Kwashiorkor
This word borrowed from an African tribe refers to the most severe and common nutritional disorder of man. Only recently discovered, it is caused by a deficiency of protein in the diet
The Physics of Viruses
The structure and function of the smallest living things are presently studied by physicists using a wide variety of physical methods and tools, among them the cyclotron
Mycenae, City of Agamemnon
It flourished some 1,000 years before the rise of classical Greece. New discoveries of its magnificent tombs shed light on one of the great civilizations of the prehistoric world
Spider Webs and Drugs
The regularity of the delicate structures made by spiders is one of the wonders of nature. Now abnormalities in these patterns are used to study the mechanism by which drugs produce their effects...
The Ultimate Atom
When a positive electron is emitted by a radioactive nucleus, it may briefly join with a negative electron to form "positronium." This simple system confirms the logic of quantum electrodynamics...
Robert Hooke
This 17th-century Englishman was a prodigious scientist and inventor. To mention a few of his achievements, he made basic contributions to physics, chemistry, meteorology, geology, biology and astronomy...
Children's Books
A fifth Christmas review of books about science for younger readers
Departments
50 and 100 Years Ago: December 1954
Science and the Citizen: December 1954
- Letters
Letters to the Editors, December 1954
- Amateur Scientist
The Amateur Scientist
- Departments
The Authors
Bibliography
Annual Index
