DID YOU HEAR THIS?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 59, 9 August 1940, Page 5

DID YOU HEAR THIS?

Extracts From Recent Talks

Answering Questions T is easy to propound questions which scientists find it difficult, or else impossible, to answer. Children are continually doing it, sometimes soon after they learn to speak. What causes the common cold?

How do plants grow? Why was there so much snow last winter, and will there be as much this year? Why does the sun shine continuously? A parent or teacher may be asked any or all of these during the course of half an hour. The chief hurdle is not to think of some sort of explanation, but to frame an adequate one in simple terms. A flash of

inspiration may come, and you answer, "The sun shines because it is very hot. This receives full marks from the child, who continues with devastating simplicity: "And why is the sun so _ hot, daddy?" If you shrewdly suggest that this must be because something is burning on the sun, the child may want to know what is burning, and when will it be used up, And so on. Each explanation requires a further one in terms of some simpler concept. Finally (if your temper holds) you will reach the limit in your line of deductive reasoning and. arrive at a statement which must be accepted as true from the innate nature of things. It is important to realise this. Science cannot rightly be blamed for this kind of ignorance. Let me repeat it is impossible to explain anything unless it be in terms of something simpler or better understood; so, in the last resort, there must always remain something which can neither be further explained nor analysed. It has to be accepted on faith. — (From "New Physical Ideas and Riddles," by Dr. C. M. Focken, 4YA, July 30). Busy Bees SOME groups of insects are remarkable for the high grade of their intelligence. This shows itself mainly in a number of instincts often of a remarkable. character- which relate to the protection and

rearing of the young and in some cases lead to the differentiation of various kinds-workers, soldiers and sexual individuals, for mutual support and protection. We find social life in its most highly developed form among the bees. There is division of labour which is expressed alike in habit and structure. The males or drones take no part in

the work of the colony and are wholly reproductive. The females include the queen bees and the workers. In the workers which perform all the work of the hive, reproductive organs do not function, In the queens, of which there is but one adult to each hive, the enormous development of the reproductive organs seems to act as a check on the brain and other organs which are less developed than in the workers. The workers are divided into nurses, which are young and do not leave the hive, being occupied with the care of the larvae, and the older foraging bees which gather food for the whole colony. The habit of laying up stores of food material for the winter enables the colony, and not merely an individual to survive--(Alathea Solomons. B.Sc.. " Talks by a Biologist: Wonderful Devices," 1YA). A Crusader in Print UPTON SINCLAIR realises that his sixty years ‘~ of life have brought him much notoriety and little fame. He made 30,000 dollars out of one book and invested it all in a socialist colony out of which he could not make a profit by any means. "It burned down and I lost nearly everything, and started again."

Then he launched a socialist dramatic enterprise in California on the same basis, and with the same result, and when he got clear of that he went into something else, trying to get justice for the tin miners of Colorado. He had alluring business offers, At 26 he refused 10,000 dollars a year as advertising manager of a large magazine. After publishing "The Jungle" he refused 200,000 dollars for the use of his name for a model meat packing plant. Before his real literary success he lived in New York on 414 dollars a week. Later he kept a wife and, child on 30 dollars a month. He wrote in 1917 that he had never owned a motor car — not even a Ford. He had at that time a bicycle, about 10 dollars in the bank, a few very old clothes, a few hundred books and 200 dollars’ worth of furniture bought second-

hand. Well, there it is. It is the story of most writers up to a certain point; but in the long run the story of a man who was and is a crusader, who sold 220,000 copies of three arresting books including "The Brass Check" but came out in debt, and who even in 1939 found that it cost him more to sell his books than they bring in. (Book Review of oe the World," by Upton Sinclair, 2YA, July ii. Speaking For England ICKHAM STEED is employed by the British Broadcasting Corporation to give a weekly talk on World Affairs for the benefit of oversea listeners. Why? Because he is one of the foremost living authorities on Europe, and, of course, because he is a good speaker. The greatest authority on a subject may be a poor speaker, and if he is, he won’t be engaged by the BBC. We have already given you a little life and character sketch of J. B. Priestley, the English novelist, who speaks several times a week for the BBC. Mr. Priestley and Mr. Steed make an interesting contrast. If you met Mr. Priestley you would hardly take him for anything but an Englishman. Burly, downright and deliberate in his speech, which has a rich and loamy quality, he has Englishman written all over him, and his accent marks’ the provincial. Wickham Steed looks like a foreigner-or did when the writer of this appreciation had the pleasure of meeting him in London some years ago. He is slight and dapper, and wears, or wore, an Imperial. There is a foreign air about him-in his appearance, his gestures, his emphatic manner, his precise, rather rapid speech. He suggests a French salon, and>is in fact, like the traditional diplomatist. He is English, but doubtless he acquired these rather un-English qualities in his long contact with European society of all grades. But at heart he is just as English as Mr. Priestley, and listeners know how. ‘eloquent he is in stating the English

ideals in this war and the English determination to win. ... Very few men are so well fitted to interpret to the English-speaking world the prolonged international crisis in which we live, and the resolution of England to see it through. So when we listen to Wickham Steed we are listening to a man who knows and who has the right to speak for England. — (From An Appreciation of Henry Wickham Steed, broadcast by the NBS). What Is Electricity? MUSING illustrations of our ignorance of what electricity is are continually cropping up. I will take one from the law courts of the State of Illinois, Tudee Fisher had to decide whether electricitv is

tangible or intangible. The point at issue was, did the new commodity tax passed by the Stata apply to electricity. If electricity could be bought and sold like coal or water then twenty power companies became subject to the new tax. If, on the other hand, electricity is intangible, if it is a way in which things behave, then it was not a com-

modity and was tax free. About five million dollars were involved. To help His Honour solve this thorny problem were two distinguished physicists — both had been awarded the highest honour, the Nobel Prize. Neither attacked the orthodox teaching of physics that electric current is a flow of electrons possessing inertia. But unfortunately they took opposite sides. The gist of Dr. Arthur Compton’s argument was that electricity is tangible because it can be seen, heard, felt and tasted. His worthy opponent, Dr. Irving Langmuir, said, in effect, electricity is intangible because it cannot be seen, heard, felt or tasted. The learned doctors disagreed with a vengeance, but the patient-electricity-was very much alive. A voltmeter was placed befote the judge. Its pointer leapt forward when the current was switched on. Judge Fisher had to decide whether the thing that made the pointer move was tangible or intangible. He watched, listened, pondered. Then electricity was solemnly pronounced a tangible, taxable commodity. The decision was clearly in accord with the public interest, since it resulted in much revenue for the State. I think, however, that this decision was contrary to the consensus of opinion among physicists and philosophers. Electricity itself is intangible. Its effects only can be measured, and in this way it can be bought and sold-(From "New Physical Ideas and Riddles,’ by Dr. C. M. Focken, 4YA, July 30). Over The Jumps O horse race has ever thrilled- me more than the jumping at the Dublin Show. In the interhunt club event, each club competed in pairs. Breathlessly you watched these hunting pairs taking the

six Jumps-a hedge, a stone wall, a water jump, two six-foot wide sod walls, on to which the horse jumps up, changes feet, and jumps down; and finally a gate. The riders were in hunting costume, in scarlet with black top hats, in green with velvet caps, in buff and cream, in black and white. Not only Irish clubs were competing, but English clubs also.

The winner was an Irish woman, who with her companion, wore down the pick of the hunters. Straight and slim as a girl of eighteen, her coat-tails flying as she took’ the sod wall and the stone wall and the water jump, the perfect rhythm of their movements, woman and horse, were like music. Two ancients were leaning over the fence, watching. "She’s sixty-five, if she’s a day," I heard one remark, "Bedad, she’s nearer seventy, and it’s meself that knows it," said the other. And when she drew rein to receive the crimson ribbon, I saw the snow-white hair beneath her hat, but her shining eyes had the look of unquenched youth. These Itish women riders make the men work hard for their honours.-(Nelle Scanlan, "Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax’).