HEAT AND LIGHT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22627, 15 January 1937, Page 11

HEAT AND LIGHT

BUILDING DEFICIENCIES EFFECTS UPON HEALTH SPECIAL DEFECTS OF SCHOOLS Two deficiencies in the equipment of many modern buildings, namely, in heating and artificial lighting, were mentioned in papers read to the medical science section and the opticians' division of the physics section respectively. In the course of a paper on the New Zealand climate, Dr. E. Kidson, Government meteorologist, said that in the Dominion and Australia there was need for a more scientific arrangement of heating appliances in homes, workbuildings and especially schools. This lack produced a low standard of comfort.

•' Scholars sometimes have to work, for example," ho said, " in temperatures near freezing point, and it is quite common for inside temperatures to be below 50 degrees. Tt is probable that the very great frequency of colds, influenza, and other minor ailments is associated with this lack of proper conditioning of the air in buildings. The general adoption of central heating would almost certainly do away with much sickness.

" But in buildings with central heating the temperature is usually too high, the humidity often low and conditions enervating. The brain works best in fairly low temperatures. An intense research into the best way of heating buildings of various classes and maintaining desirable conditions as regards humidity and ventilation would be of the utmost value."

With all the Rrp.it potentialities of electric light at their disposal, many people were still living in the candle age, stated Dr. Matthew Luekiesch, director of the lighting research laboratory of the General Electric Company, Cleveland, in a paper communicated from America to the opticians' division. It was unquestionable that the prevalent intensities of illumination indoors in the daytime and almost everywhere at night were woefully inadequate. As a result, human resources —energy, eyesight, health, life and limb—were being unnecessarily wasted. There was a practical upper limit to the intensities that could be supplied by general lighting of rooms, but localised direct lighting could be added easily and economically, as for example in the home by portable lamps. Tn a supplementary paper, Mr. E. W. Crosier, an Australian optometrist, described the technique for ascertaining by tests the intensity of light which best suited a patient for carrying out a particular task or activity. Hie tests, he said, were of particular benefit to elderly people, many of whom were found"to be reading in quite inadequate light at home.

STUDY OF lONISATION IMPORTANT DISCOVERIES WORK IN THE DOMINION Australian scientists engaged in exploring the upper atmosphere by means of radio transmission have already won for themselves a very prominent place in this research by reason of the many remarkable discoveries they have made. Special interest therefore attached to tho meetings of the physics section of the Science Congress yesterday, all the papers being devoted to the exploration of tho atmosphere. The success of these experiments depends on the fact that ionised layers in the atmosphere, surrounding the earth like the skins of an onion, bend back toward the ground the radio waves which encounter them. The behaviour of the ionised layers and their intimate connection with the weather which has recently been proved to exist make their study of immense potential value to the meteorologist as well as the radio expert. In the first paper, Mr. G. H. Munro, formerly of Auckland University College, but now a research worker in Sydney, described in detail his own method of gaining knowledge of the ionosphere, a method capable of estimating the number of collisions between electrons and molecules.

That New Zealand is performing a creditable share of this profitable study was evidenced in two further papers by New Zealand scientists. Dr. D. Brown, physics lecturer at the Auckland University College, gave many illustrations of particular interest on account of abnormalities occurring in the ionised layers and indicated a possible new correlation between the ionosphere and wind velocity. Even more striking results have accrued, however, from the study undertaken by Mr. G. A. Peddie. of Wellington. In this investigation Mr. Peddie has been fortunate in obtaining records of two layers which Australians find it impossible to observe. During the eclipse of the sun last month Mr. Peddie made measures of the fluctuations in the heights of the various ionised layers, finding that the visual eclipse was accompanied by a marked eclipse in the ionosphere. By the nature of this eclipse little doubt can remain that the agent which causes all the ionisation in the atmosphere is the ultra-violet radiation from the sun.

Dr. P. F. Martvn, one of the world's leading scientists on radio research, later warmly praised Mr. Peddie for the important results ho had achieved.