Science: Temperature

By passing electric welding arcs through gases at high pressure, scientists have produced temperatures of 11,000° F., roughly the surface temperature of the sun. By alternately magnetizing and demagnetizing certain precooled salts, scientists have reached temperatures only a tiny fraction above absolute zero, −459.72° F. But hundreds of scientists assembled for a science congress in Canberra, Australia’s capital, last week could do precisely nothing to alter a summer temperature of 108° in the shade.

Delegates wore linen suits, shorts, sandals and open shirts to a garden party at Parliament House—which reporters called the “most informal” in Australian history—but sweat ran down their faces. When a cooling shower fell on the party, the change was too much for Scientist Ernest Clayton Andrews, past president of the congress. He was found unconscious in a rain puddle, hospitalized.*

Clarioned Governor General Lord Gowrie: “If scientists and laymen carry from the conference a determination that they will be masters, not servants of science, they will have made a valuable contribution to the cause of civilization and world peace!”

* For a more serious Australian disaster, see p. 17.