Of Logarithm Tables ?

The Month's New Reading

With Judy Tudor

Have You Got A Book Of Logarithm Tables ?

Something quite new in monthly journalism went down the publishing slipways in February —The Australian Scientist, Volume 1, Number 1.

r will be a monthly magazine produced on the premise that science is going to play an in easing part in our daily lives.

It is written by experts in their m particular fields—in other »rds, scientists—but its prospective dience—or so we gather—is you d me, in the expectation that we 11 want to know what is in store r us and also something of the plication to everyday life of re nt scientific studies.

In a letter accompanying the first ue, it is stated that the magazine written to “Leaving Certificate r el”, which while being true ough, won’t prevent these people io passed this particular Aus ilian school examination a long ne ago having quite a battle with ne of the articles.

Phis is going to be the editor’s rgest problem—getting over what scientific writers want to say in nple terms without seeming to k down to the customers.

"Science Important"

Most laymen are prepared to be ve what the scientists tell us— it scientific advancement is the >st important thing in the world lay.

But when the same scientists try talk to us about it, in a language it is very familiar to them, how my of us understand one-quarter what they are saying? r or example, S. T. Butler, Pro sor of Theoretical Physics at the dversity of Sydney, in an article a t discusses the elementary )bability theory in relation to nes of chance—a subject that I 1 would probably interest a lot of stralians who haven’t got their aving Certificates—describes the ince of turning up two sixes from •owing a pair of dice by saying it if we want to have a “50-50 mce of turning up this particular nbination, the probability should I”. And goes on to say that “the mber of throws n necessary for a 50 chance” is expressed in an lation with which our linotype mot cope. )r, as the Professor puts it ernatively:

This can also be solved “most simply” by taking logarithms, with the result: log 2 n = = 24.605 log 36 log 35 Now, when I was about 17, and in Form 6A, I am sure that I’d have known perfectly what the Professor was talking about, but as I just about need a set of logarithm tables to calculate the elapsed time since then, I am prepared to take for gospel what Professor Butler says in the beginning of the article— that when you throw two dice there are 36 possible combinations in which the spots can come up. And I am mightily comforted by the fact that I am not addicted to throwing dice, anyhow.

I think that if this magazine is to be the success that it deserves, its editorial board is going to have to forget its obvious obsession that everyone who has ever passed a Leaving Certificate examination, or its overseas equivalent, has kept up with their mathematics.

There are hundreds of thousands of people in Australia shining

lights in their own fields of law, journalism, commerce and industry —who are terribly anxious to understand what Science is trying to tell them, but it seems to me un realistic if they are to be expected to keep a book of logarithms on their office desks so they can work out some of these articles.

If the magazine is to be aimed at other scientists, of course, it is a different matter, but in that event it would defeat one of its stated aims—“to increase interest in and knowledge of scientific subjects”.

Apart from Professor Butler’s theories on throwing dice, this first issue covers a vast range of sub jects.

There are several articles on medical matters—including one on heart drugs from a plant which old fashioned gardeners in places like Tasmania, NZ or England called “Foxglove” but whose real name is Digitalis purpurea.

Another on automatic computers —which newspapers usually call electronic brains.

Isobel Bennett, of the Sydney University Department of Zoology, writes about the marine life found on Australian sea-shores.

There is an article that describes the part science plays in civil en gineering; one on cosmic radiation, and another on what goes on in a cyclotron.

There is, above all, a long article by Professor Harry Messel (the guy who has gone on record elsewhere as saying that .anyone incapable of learning mathematics is fit only to

be a road labourer), on his pet sub ject of a “New Deal in Science Education”.

The editor of the magazine is Dr.

E. P. George, Director of the Physics Department of St. Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney; and there is a formidable array of talent on the Editorial board: Prof. A. A. Abbie, FRACP; Prof. S. T. Butler; Dr. A. S.

Fraser; Prof. R. J. W. Le Fevre, FA A, FRS; Prof. H. Messel; Prof.

Sir Mark Oliphant, KBE, FRS; Prof. R. N. Robertson; Prof. R. H.

Thorp; Prof. Sir Samuel Wadham.

This is one of the most ambitious projects ever attempted in Aus tralian magazine publication. Its layout and display is modern and technically excellent; its illustra tions are numerous and many of them are in colour. Price per issue is 9/6; or £4/4/- per annum for 12 copies posted, which taking all things into consideration, is reason able enough for what you get.

(The Australian Scientist, 9-23

Upward St., Leichhardt. Sydney, NSW.)

The Music That

Lurched

Miss Sylvia Aston-Warner

is alleged to write with a “kind of explosive passion”, accord ing to the Sunday Times of Lon don —which may be true if one could find out what she is trying to write about at all in Incense to Idols.

This Exercise in Odd Prose — which proves, if nothing else, that New Zealand writers have graduated from the bougeois class that be lieves the written word should be comprehensible—takes the form of a low, first person, muttered solil oquy.

Germain de Beauvais is the dame who mutters, and she travels from France to New Zealand for no reason, so far as we can make out, than to practice playing the piano in a church hall.

Four or five others, including ham-handed New Zealanders, make passes at Germain but it’s really the minister in the church next to the hall who she has her eye on— and who is the subject of most of her muttering. . . . “It must be vou mon cher . . ” she cries. “What makes the inner music I constantly hear lurch to a halt? There’s noth ing to my taste about you.”

At the end of the book they really get down to things, face to face, and decide that they both burn in cense to idols —although other than that, it appears to have been a pure relationship.

Good on you, Sylvia, anyway. So long as the fellows that matter on the Times and Observer know what you are nattering about, who the heck cares about those poor types just across the Tasman? (INCENSE TO IDOLS Published by Seeker and Warburg. Australian price, 22/6.)