New Wrinkles

Germanium Crop. Dr. Hans Brauchli of Johns Hopkins University is one of many scientists who have been ransacking the earth for germanium, the rare and elusive metal that is made into transistors.

He knew that certain kinds of coal contain small amounts of it, probably concentrated in some way by the ancient plants that coal is made of. So Dr. Brauchli analyzed the ash of modern plants that grow in parts of the eastern U.S. where the water shows faint traces of germanium. He found that some plants, mostly from swampy areas near mountains, have as much as 5% of the metal in their ash. Apparently they "discard" the germanium, depositing it in outlying parts, such as leaves and bark. Dr. Brauchli believes that it might be profitable, in favored spots, to grow water-greedy plants merely for the germanium that they try to throw away.

3-D Mike. Hit of last week's industrial fair at Hannover, Germany, was a three-dimensional projection microscope designed by Dr. Friedrich Fehse of Hamburg. It projected repulsive little creatures (protozoa, bacilli, etc.) on a three-foot screen and enlarged them to the size of rabbits. Observers wearing polarized glasses got the shock of their lives. The blown-up varmints appeared to be swimming toward them, even reaching for them.

Dr. Fehse explains that his microscope works rather like 3-D movies. It projects two images on the screen, each in a different kind of polarized light. Observers with polarized glasses see one image with one eye, and the other image with the other eye. So the creatures look solid and menacing.

Weather Pen. Much of the world's weather is affected by the "jet-stream"--a narrow, wandering wind that blows at high altitude, often as fast as 200 m.p.h. (TIME, Oct. i, 1951). Weathermen have been keeping track of it with sounding balloons, but the process is slow and expensive. Last week Meteorologist R. E. Falconer of General Electric Research Laboratory told about an electrical gadget that can tell when the jet-stream comes within 200 miles of Schenectady. The gadget "feels" the air for positive or negative charges, then writes its findings with a pen on a moving strip of paper. An unusually high positive reading means that the jet-stream is near.

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