| Issue Date |
Column Title |
Subject |
Comments |
| 1958 DEC |
Catching Up With Newton |
surface gravity, escape velocities |
Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation, gravitational force in relation to distance, surface gravity & escape velocities in the solar system, effects on satellites & spaceships |
| 1958 NOV |
Dust of Ages, The |
micrometeorites |
atmosphere's meteoric dust, its quantity(28.6 mil. tons in the atmosphere at any one time); over Earth's history(5 bil. years), only 1/1000th of Earth's mass; meteoric dust is mostly iron, & most iron in Earth's crust is meteoric |
| 1959 APR |
Life's Bottleneck |
elements in living tissue, the ocean |
composition & elements of the ocean, a copepod(mostly water; oxygen, hydrogen); essential elements & those in short supply; euphotic zone, land-based life, elements in need limit life on Earth |
| 1959 AUG |
Ultimate Split of the Second, The |
ultra-small units of time |
using speed of light in defining units of distance & time, including ultra-short intervals of time; smallest unit of time, light-fermi, the time at which strong nuclear interactions take place; hyperons, mesons |
| 1959 DEC |
Thin Air |
atmosphere (part 1) |
history of how man has viewed the atmosphere, from Aristotle's 'element of air', through Torricelli's barometer, Boyle's Law, hot-air balloonists discoveries of the upper atmosphere, the discovering 'layers' of the atmosphere |
| 1959 FEB |
Love Those Numbers |
large numbers |
the history of large & exremely large numbers; billion invented in France in 15th century; exponential numbers, & numbering systems(French-American, & English-German) |
| 1959 JAN |
No More Ice Ages? |
ice ages, greenhouse effect, CO2 |
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the carbon dioxide cycle, reactions to form carbonates - balanced ecology; what starts an ice age; what man is doing to throw off the equilibrium |
| 1959 JUL |
Battle of the Eggheads |
intellectual bigotry |
attitude of Americans toward science(subject of his article, #919, 1957 APR); snobbery among the educated, humanities vs. sciences, intellectual aristocracy & bigotry, after Sputnik; Cold War mentality |
| 1959 JUN |
Planet of the Double Sun, The |
Alpha Centauri |
specifics of the double-star system Alpha Centauri, closest neighbor to our solar system; duplicating the A.C. system in our solar system, how would our solar system, lives, cultures, histories be different |
| 1959 MAR |
Nothing |
vacuum of space, interstellar dust |
does a true vacuum exist anywhere in Universe?; man-made vacuums, interstellar space, intergalactic space(lowest density of matter); mass of the Observable Universe; estimates mass of intergalactic matter is 280 times the mass of all the galaxies stars |
| 1959 MAY |
Of Capture and Escape |
escape velocities |
velocities needed to escape gravitational fields of Earth, the Moon, the other planets; Earth's velocity(66,600 mph) around the Sun; solar escape velocity; addendum on Boyd's article(#1139) |
| 1959 NOV |
C for Celeritas |
speed of light, e=mc˛ |
Einstein's equation e=mc˛; Asimov discusses at length its use and, especially, the units involved: the dyne, the erg & joule, the terms 'work' & 'force', the speed of light; addendum to his 1959 JUL science essay(#1266) |
| 1959 OCT |
Height of Up, The |
temperature extremes & measurements |
history of measuring temperatures, first by Galileo in 1603, thermometers & different temperature scales, interconversion equations; addendum discusses the Réaumur scale, gives three problems for readers to solve(answers follow) |
| 1959 SEP |
Varieties of the Infinite |
infinity, transfinite numbers |
meaning of infinite & infinity(infinite is Latin for endless, infinity is quality of endlessness); infinite and transfinite numbers, fractions, points in a line, pi; the symbol 'C', for 'continuum' |
