Word: follin
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...bolts are actually great electrical discharges between clouds and earth. A new theory by a Johns Hop kins scientist indicates that there might be some truth in the old myth after all. At a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco last week, Physicist James W. Follin Jr. of Johns Hopkins University theorized that lightning is probably triggered by cosmic rays from deep space...
...Follin and his colleagues, Ernest Grey and Kwang Yu, explain it, cosmic rays act like cue balls in a kind of nuclear billiard game. When they strike and shatter atoms in the upper atmosphere, they produce a shower of subatomic bits of matter moving at great speed. When these so-called "secondary cosmic rays" collide with atoms in a cloud, they knock electrons from them. Accelerated in the cloud's electric field, these electrons avalanche toward the bottom of the cloud and pile up there...
What triggers the bolt, says Follin, are particles in the secondary cosmic showers called muons, which increase the charge with fresh electron avalanches. Finally, electrons burst from the cloud along a path of ionized (electrically charged) air. As other muons intercept the path at different angles, forming new trails, the electrons follow a jagged, steplike route to the ground...
Smoker Committee--A. S. Neilson, chairman; F. G. Brown, W. F. Cogswell, F. W. Copeland, W. W. Davies, J. W. Follin, H. S. McKee...
...University in the order named, while Yale will be represented by F. E. Morris, A. B. Green, and E. M. Porter. The judges will be: Professor Charles T. Terry of the Columbia Law School, Professor Garrett Droppers of Williams College, and Professor Grosvenor of Amherst College. J. W. Follin has been chosen alternate for the Freshman team...