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USE OF SUN ENERGY IS AIM OF RESEARCH (Real Time + 70 Years)
Microfiche-New York Times archives | 6/5/38 | No byline

Posted on 06/05/2008 5:58:44 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson

USE OF SUN ENERGY IS AIM OF RESEARCH

M. I. T. Gets $647,700 Grant for 50-Year Campaign to ‘Harness’ Solar Rays

INQUIRY IN 3 DIRETIONS

Study Will Develop Chemical, Mechanical and Electrical Phases of Problem

Dr. Godfrey Lowell Cabot has donated $647,700 to Massachusetts Institute of Technology for research which is to discover, if possible, how the energy of the sun may be used practically. This bring the total of his gifts for research on the utilization of solar energy to $1,262,773, inasmuch as last year he gave $615,773 to Harvard to discover ways of increasing the rate at which solar energy is stored to produce wood in a tree or grain in a plant. He stipulated that research is to be conducted under both programs for at least fifty years, after which the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard may use the money as they see fit.

In commenting on the work that is expected of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, both President Karl T. Compton and Dean Vannevar Bush point out that Dr. Cabot is no utopian dreamer. During the three Summer months an acre of land in the temperate zone receives from the sun an amount of heat equivalent to burning approximately 250 tons of high-grade coal. This works out at a horsepower to the square yard. Dr. Charles G. Abbot, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, has estimated that the heat radiated by the sun in a single year is equal to that generated by burning 400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons of anthracite coal. This solar energy is the ultimate source of our fuels – wood, coal, oil and gas – as well as of power derived from wind or falling water.

Plants are not particularly good converters of solar energy. They capture about two or three-tenths of 1 per cent of the amount that falls on a tract of land in the growing season. Research conducted at Harvard with the aid of last year’s gift may enable botanists to produce plants which will do better. As it is, a cow which eats grass and changes it into milk is about the best kind of solar engine thus far devised.

The solar-energy research program contemplated by the institute is divided by Dean Bush into three major fields of investigation.

“First of all,” says Dr. Bush, “we have the exciting possibilities held out by solar engines.” Mirrors have been used in the past to concentrate the sun’s rays on boilers or on thin films of water flowing through troughs.

“The problem of economically collecting the sun’s heat is a baffling one and should not be circumscribed by the requirements of engines of conventional conception,” explains Dr. Bush. Hence research also will be conducted to discover if there is not a way of converting the sun’s energy into electricity by vacuum tubes, photoelectric cells, thermophiles and copper-oxide cells. “All of these are notoriously inefficient,” says Dr. Bush. “Still, one cannot assume that further knowledge and its application may not entirely change the situation.”

Lastly, there is the possibility of chemically converting the sun’s energy into work. Dr. Bush hints at chemical compounds that can absorb solar energy and store it for the economical production of power.

PUMPING BACK GAS STEPS UP OIL YIELD

Well-Pressure Maintenance Is Hailed in Louisiana Tests

O. E. Bennett, chief petroleum engineer of the Continental Oil Company, reports to the American Petroleum Institute that at Tepetate, La., he has succeeded in obtaining 40 per cent more petroleum from pools by maintaining the natural underground pressure.

Oil is held in the sub-surface zones by gas pressures ranging from less than a thousand to upward of 3,700 pounds a square inch. When a pool is tapped by a well, oil and gas are “pushed” out, but the pressure declines rapidly. In the early days, oil men considered the gas a nuisance. By “blowing off” a well before pumping, millions of barrels of oil were lost forever.

As far back as 1903 I. L. Dunn demonstrated the possibility of pushing out oil by injecting gas into the hard oil-bearing sand or porous rock. “Repressuring” is somewhat of an emergency measure applied to partly depleted pools from which both pressure and energy have been taken. Bennett is for “pressure maintenance” which he defines as the return of gas at the beginning of operations in a new field to preserve the original conditions. To him it is one of the most discussed and least-practiced operations in the industry today.

Bennett tried out his ideas with success at Tepetate, where oil is produced at 8,313 feet. The original pressure was 3,640 pounds to the square inch. As oil was produced the pressure naturally dropped. During the planning and installation of the pressure maintenance equipment the field averaged 3,650 barrels for each pound of decline in pressure. Now that the pressure maintenance system is in operation production is up to 200,000 barrels for each one-pound drop in pressure. The last 175,000 barrels were taken out with no pressure drop at all.

About 15,000,000 cubic feet of gas a day are being returned to the pool. Additional equipment will return 5,000,000 cubic feet more a day.

NOTES FROM THE LABORATORIES

From the University of California comes the news that Dr. Herbert M. Evans, known the world over for his work on the pituitary gland, has succeeded in obtaining an approximate increase of 70 per cent in yield of the growth hormone in the anterior lobe of the gland and a five-fold increase in impotency. Up to the present time extracts of this particular hormone have not been used very successfully in cases of arrested human development, largely because of impurities. Dr. Evans’s announcement leads to the hope that complete purification may not be far off. When that is achieved we may expect spectacular improvements in children who are stunted because of some pituitary deficiency.

PUTTING HIGH TONES TO WORK

Dr. William T. Richards of the Rockefeller Institute reports to the Acoustical Society of America that sounds which are so high that wee cannot hear them are used successfully to vibrate liquids and solids with astonishing results. Fogs can be dissipated, whisky aged, cosmetics and photographic plates stabilized, milk sterilized, metals degassed. “But the electrical production of sound waves is appallingly wasteful,” says Dr. Richards. He believes that mechanical devices will take the place of the electrical.

TEMPERAMENTAL GLACIERS

Do glaciers flow evenly, like water, or in pulses or jerks? There are two schools of thought on the question. Dr. Hans Tollner went to Norway with an automatic measuring instrument of his invention to find out which is right. Both are. Tollner found that glaciers may creep or they may move by sudden impulse as much as four inches in a few seconds. He thinks these impulses may be connected with the calving of icebergs. When the end of a glacier breaks off into the sea to form a iceberg the sudden release of pressure may cause parts farther from the shore to slip.

PICKING GOOD CANTALOUPES

The Department of Agriculture has been testing cantaloupes to discover ways of telling the good from the bad. It turns out that if picked too green the melon will retain a bit of stem and the background color beneath the netting will be a pure green, If overripe the melon will be pale yellow or faded. If a slight golden color shows through the netting and the blossom end – it lies opposite the stem end – is firm and not pale, the melon is good. Little globules of reddish brown sugar around the stem-scar are an indication of sweetness.

I. Q. THEORY DISPROVED

The intelligence quotient (I. Q. for short) is supposed by most psychologists to remain constant. Once a mental subnormal, always a subnormal. Measurements made of a boy at the New York Psychological Service Center and reported in The Journal of Consulting Psychology disprove this supposition. At 4 1/2 years this particular boy had an I. Q. of 70 – so low that he was about to be sent to an institution for the feebleminded. At 15 1/2 it is 120, and the boy is in high school doing well. “Would that it were possible to scotch for good and all the superstition that every one’s intelligence is inborn and unalterable!” exclaims the Journal.

WASTE LIGNIN NOT WASTED

Twenty-five per cent of wood is lignin, a pure waste. About 1,500,000 tons of lignin are annually turned into sewers and streams by rayon and paper factories alone. Research conducted by Drs. E. C. Sherrard and E. E. Harris of the Forest Products Laboratory indicates that this waste has its uses. The two doctors have converted it into wood alcohol; propyl-chlohesanol, which is both a lacquer solvent and a wood preservative; two varnish thickeners, and a transparent resin which may be converted into a plastic compound.


TOPICS: History; Science
KEYWORDS: energy; realtime

1 posted on 06/05/2008 5:58:44 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
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To: fredhead; GOP_Party_Animal; r9etb; PzLdr; dfwgator; Paisan; From many - one.; rockinqsranch; ...
Oops. Forgot to preview. Hope it works out OK.

This one is a summary of the week's scientific advances. I especially like the ones about aging whisky with inaudible sound waves and picking good cantalopes.

2 posted on 06/05/2008 6:00:42 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson (For events that occurred in 1938, real time is 1938, not 2008.)
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To: Homer_J_Simpson

This one is worth a vanity bump. Personally I thought it was one of the better of my myriad 6/5/38 posts.


3 posted on 06/05/2008 9:25:44 PM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson (For events that occurred in 1938, real time is 1938, not 2008.)
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To: Homer_J_Simpson

There’s nothing new under the Sun.


4 posted on 06/07/2008 5:30:08 AM PDT by decimon
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