ACTION OF STEEL UNDER STRESS REVEALED IN WRITING ON SANDHow solid steel softens and flows like wax when compressed or stretched is being shown to the naked eye by Dr. A. Nadai at the Research Laboratories of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, at East Pittsburgh, Pa.In his new apparatus, a beam of light is reflected from a highly polished surface of the metal specimen that is being compressed or twisted. Definite markings called “slip lines” appear.These slip lines are now the object of intense study by engineers and mathematicians as they indicate how a machine part of this s...

TURKEYSThe beautiful bronze turkeys that furnish the biggest specimens for the family festivities were domesticated before white men came to America. Cortez found them in the markets of Mexico, and showed that he was a gourmet as well as freebooter; for turkeys soon found their way to Spain and thence all over Europe, finally being reintroduced into American domestication in the English-speaking colonies, which had, however, already made the acquaintance of the smaller native wild turkey of their own forests.So popular was the turkey with early Americans that Benjamin Franklin advocated placin...

PHYSICISTS STUDY EFFECTS OF STRONG WINDS ON SKYSCRAPERSAnother official government investigation is getting under way in Washington. The men involved in the new probe are studying a problem of vital concern to every city in America.The investigators working now are scientists, and their problem is to find out whether skyscrapers—including the 10- and 20-story skyscrapers of the average American city—are safe. The government is anxious to know if giant structures give adequate protection to the thousands of people who work within their lofty walls.One key question the probing scientists seek an...

HUDSON RIVER BRIDGE RIVALED FOR FAME BY NEW ARCHESWhile the completion of the great George Washington suspension bridge, which has hurled itself in one bold leap across 3,500 feet of the Hudson River from Manhattan to the New Jersey shore, is being celebrated, two other bridges, likewise the largest in the world of their kind, are being given finishing touches preparatory to their christening in the mighty stream of modern traffic.They are twin bridges, or nearly so, for one is only 2 feet and 1 inch longer than the other; and they are built after exactly the same type of construction. They ar...

CATS WERE WILD IN ANCIENT SOUTHWESTIn ancient America, it was bad luck to meet a cat on a dark night. All the cats that the Indians knew were wildcats. Dogs were tamed and learned to follow Indian hunters and Indian children around, but cats walked by themselves, very wild and alone.The Indian pottery bowl on the cover is from the collection in the American Museum of Natural History. The bowl is adorned by a fine, big cat such as Pueblo Indians knew. Kitty’s teeth are set for a me-yowl or a bite. Her eye has the alert look of a Hallowe’en cat, all witching and eerie. The long, upcurving tail i...

GLACIERS CAUSED GEOLOGICAL MOVING DAYS“Evolution, not revolution” is a nice-sounding catchword used on all sorts of occasions by all sorts of people, especially by conservative politicians posing as liberals. But a broad view of the evolutionary stage, recorded by a leading scientist who has just left it, indicates that evolution has often proceeded by great jumps, and that these waves of change, both in the species of animals and in their distributions, were responses to geological revolutions in the uneasy old earth itself.One of the last writings by the late Prof. W.D. Matthew of the Univer...

MATERNAL CARES MULTIPLY WITH COMING OF COLDWinter has breathed a hint of its coming already, in puffs of frosty air that make us forget the heat of summer that is gone, even of the unseasonable hot spell of early September. But the coming of the cold bodes only ill for the cold-blooded creatures of field and forest. They have but two alternatives: to die, leaving eggs, larvae or pupae in safe places to carry on the life of the species next year; or to endure the cold and drought in the death-like slumber of hibernation.Spiders take both courses. Some species leave their egg-balls hidden in cre...

X-RAYS FIND NEW BEAUTIES FOR STUDENTS OF FLOWERSSearching the secrets of a flower’s heart acquires new esthetic significance at least, and may become of importance in plant physiology and anatomy, too, through an X-ray technique developed by Mrs. Hazel Engelbrecht of Des Moines. It is not the first time that X rays have been used on flowers, but Mrs. Engelbrecht has brought to bear a rare combination of most sensitive control of her unusual medium and an appreciation of pictorial composition that makes the result, though novel, art in its truest sense.SCIENTIST SAYS UNIVERSE IS ACTUALLY EXPLOD...

A SEA-GOING LIZARD FROM GALAPAGOSWhen Darwin, as a young naturalist just out of school, visited the Galápagos islands, he saw a number of things that helped to crystallize and precipitate in his mind the concept, already seeded there, that later revolutionized all biology and much of philosophy. Not the least provocative of speculation was a most peculiar species of sea-going lizard, the marine iguana that basked—and still does bask—in thousands on the sun-warmed rocks, slipping off into the water betimes to browse on the thick-growing seaweeds.Reptiles, Darwin knew, are predominantly dry-land...

FLASH WELDING JOINS METAL AMID SHOWER OF SPARKSA brilliant shower of sparks for a few seconds, and two pieces of steel have become one, with a union as strong as the original metal itself.The picture on the front cover from the Pittsfield, Mass., works of the General Electric Company illustrates a recent adaptation of electric welding to industry. It is joining together the sides of the open seam of a cylindrical casing for a small transformer. As the edges to be welded slowly near each other and as the minute projections come into contact first in one place and then in another, there is a spe...