Kodak reports to laboratories o n : solvency and open w i n d o w s from 2 Ιο 16μ . . . h o w far w e ' v e come from camphor . . . recruiting talent for high-energy physics
Responsibility of the house Only our word as a reputable house that this chart fairly describes our new Spectro Grades of Tetrachloroethylene (Eastman S2418) and N,N-Dimethylformamide (Eastman S5870) makes them worth $15.10 and $5.15 per liter respectively. Ultraviolet Cut-OfT (ΓΠΜ) Tetrachloroethylene
290
Ν,Ν-DimethyHormamide
268
Wavelength in microns 2
The only reason why a person capable of doing infrared or ultra violet spectrophotometric analysis shouldn't check and if necessary purify his own solvents is an eco nomic one. If he cannot employ his time and talents at a higher level, perhaps his setup should be checked for something wrong. Tetrachloroethylene (stabilized with Thymol) is added to our list of 15 Eastman Spectro Solvents be cause it closes three gaps—6.5-6.8μ, 7.9-8.3/x, and 13.4-14.2μ—in the in frared spectrum that is available to the worker who needs the solvency of chlorinated hydrocarbons. From 12.0 to 13.4μ, chlorinated-hydrocar bon darkness still prevails (but Bromoform (Eastman S45) suffers from little of this blackout). Ν,Ν-Dimethylformamide is added because some organic chemists have regarded it from the days of youth as something of a universal solvent and would fain continue so even after involving themselves in the newer-fangled optical chemistry. This amide is even a good solvent for nylon and any other amidetype plastics you may have around. It is definitely more polar than ben zene or acetone and may not be a bad bet for dissolving amides from protein hydrolysates. The low mo lecular weight helps build up the solute concentration percentage. Free for the asking from Distillation Products Industries, Eastman Organic Chemicals Department, Rochester 3, Ν. Y., is a chart showing the overlap ping infrared windows of all the East man Spectro Solvents. (From 2 to 16\x not a sliver has evaded overlapping.)
Soft vinyl, soft arteries At this year's National Plastics Ex hibition we exhibited the latest tri
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umph in the continuing effort to find something more elegant than burning to do to the hydrocarbon gases that issue from holes drilled in the ground. Perhaps an impor tant new direction has been given to plasticizers, substances that make plastics plastic. The new twist is a practical plasticizer that is itself a high polymer (molecular weight about 1200). To him who first cries "So what?" we retort that our new polyester of a dibasic acid with neopentyl glycol (a trivial name for 2,2-dimethylpentane-l,3-diol, made by condensing formaldehyde with isobutyraldehyde from our Texas petrochemical operations) resists hydrolysis and stays put in vinyl films, come weather, aggressive hydrocarbons, or soapy water; that with no auxili ary plasticizer it keeps vinyl sheet palely clear and softly flexible, even at low temperature; and that it "mills in" rapidly during com pounding with vinyl resins. Eastman Polymeric Plasticizer NP10 it is designated. Samples, data, and quotations are available from Eastman Chemical Products, Inc., Kingsport, Tenn. (Subsidiary of Eastman Kodak Company). To come up with something like this is a comfort because it suggests that a corporation can attain venerability in a field, unaccompanied by hardening of the arteries. More than 70 years ago, when we became involved in an attempt —successful—to extend photography from plates and paper tofilm,nitrocellu lose was the only plastic and camphor was its plasticizer.
Little black tracks Rochester, a city which gets a fair amount of its living from the pho tographic emulsion, has been the site for the past six years of great international conferences on nu
This is one of α series of reports on the many products and services with which the Eastman Kodak Company and
clear particle physics. It is mere co incidence that photographic emul sions are the source of much of the raw data that the savants come to trade, ponder, and debate. Yet, be cause we make some of the photo graphic emulsion they use, we are perhaps more awed than our butch ering, baking, and candlestickmaking fellow-townsmen at the mighty intellectuality focussed on the microscopic tracks of black specks that mark the births, en counters, and deaths of nucléons,
leptons, mesons (light and heavy) and hyperons. Here men and women strain every known resource of thought and mathematics to build a logical structure strong enough to hold these "elementary" particles until next year's conference, when parts of it will surely come crashing down as new evidence is presented. Not the least remarkable aspect of this is the virtual certainty that here and there in the land there must be a kid (now in Cub Scouts or possibly trying to understand rock 'n' roll) who, a few years from now, will be reading the proceedings of these conferences with a smile of tolerance for the pitiful errors of the physicists who preceded him. A parent or teacher who suspects he knows such a kid has a chilling responsibility. Scientific American recently carried an article, "The Tracks of Nuclear Particles," pitched at those who have no knowledge of the subject or its vocabulary but who are blessed with vigorous, inquiring minds. We have bought 2,000 reprints to give away. Requests should be addressed to Eastman Kodak Company, Special Sensitized Goods Division, Rochester 4, Ν. Υ. Prices quoted are s change without not.
Kodak
its divisions are. ..serving laboratories everywhere V O L U M E 2 8, N O . 9, S E P T E M B E R
1956
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