BRITISH ASSOCIATION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 80, 26 August 1914, Page 2

BRITISH ASSOCIATION.

"ATOMS AND ELECTRONS." PRAISE FOR Sill 15. RUTHERFORD. liy Cable- I'icss Association—Copyright Sydney, August 25. Sir Ernest Rutherford, in lite course of a lecture on "Atoms ami' Electrons," said tliat the atomic thcorv had now attained a hicrh degree of probability. Through recently-made measurements one must admit the granular structure in matter. There wre also indications, as pointed out'by Helmiholtz in IS7O, that small quantities of electricity existed, all of the same magnitude, on these electrical particles which were now called electrons. Sir Oliver Lodge, who presided, in thanking Sir E. Rutherford for his gr • X lecture, said the lecturer was a gro.tt worker in physical science, to Whom they owed many discoveries, and' to whom they were going to owe more. He had struck fertile ground which was certain to yield a deli harvest. Professor 'Dixon, gave a series of denionstrations of the extraordinary accelerating influence of traces of water on chemical reactions. He observed thai the ordinary explosive mixture of carbon monoxide and oxvgen could not be fi.ro. 1 if t3ie gases were dry. He : 1lustrated the difference between the thnee phases of gaseous explosions, the slow propagation by conduction, the vibratory period of rapid detonation, and the explosion wave. The lecturer described experiments on explosions in mines, showing that diluting coal dust with its own weight of combustible gas mato.s a mixture difficult to ignite. The danger of finely-divided, inert dust making firedamp more explosive 3iad been proved not to exist. Professor Netschajeff, in the education section, discoursed on 'Russian pedagogics. Professor Turner's wrper ou "Diseon-* tinuities in Meteorological Phenomena" showed' the progress of research into the .possibility of forecasting weather for months and seasons.