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Road engineers are concerned with the quality of the materials used in construction and with the supporting power of the soil beneath roads. Physical methods are being used to an increasing extent to achieve these objectives. This paper describes some of the physical methods developed by the Road Research Laboratory for the purposes of research in these fields, and many of them are now used in normal road construction.

On looking through the November 1965 Bulletin (presumably a random sample) I noticed no less than three advertisements for work in various physical aspects of combustion science. Yet, with a few exceptions, graduates of British universities can have very little concept of the content and interest of this field; except at institutions with active research schools in the subject, these topics may not find their way into the syllabus for perhaps another 20 years. If we bear in mind that combustion was probably the first chemical reaction and the first artificial energy source consciously put to use by man, this seems rather surprising at first sight.

In the preface to his book Dimensional Analysis J. Palacios (1964) remarks that the novelty in it is of such a kind, and in such contradiction to "the ideas professed by all specialists", that he found it necessary to demonstrate that his "new method surpasses those held by the most highly regarded specialists". It is somewhat surprising, therefore, that this novelty has received no attention either from Dr. Pankhurst (Proc. Phys. Soc., 1964) or, as far as I am aware, from other reviewers. The theory developed in the book, says the author, is based on the assumption that the symbols occurring in physical equations represent the measures (numbers) obtained with any system of coherent units whatsoever.

It was with considerable interest that I read (Bulletin, January 1966) Dr. Burniston Brown's reply to my letter in last October's Bulletin. Let me deal first with his last point. I am asked "if energy is now a new concept over and above its precise metrical definition, what is it that is conceived?" I shall immediately retort: if time is a concept over and above its precise metrical definition, what is it that is conceived?

G. Burniston Brown appears to me to be wrong in extending his quite difficult criticisms to the Nuffield Project (Bulletin January 1966), at least if we consider the 11–16 year range. It is important in criticizing teaching at this level to distinguish between haziness which can be necessary in the initial introduction of an idea and mis-statements which are unnecessarily wrong. It is correct teaching to introduce a hazy idea of energy to the 11 year old and build towards a precise definition at 16.

Having examined the contents of recent issues of the Bulletin, we would like to put forward some suggestions which we think may be constructive and lead to the publication being of greater use (and interest) to members: We feel that: (a) Conference reports could be omitted from the Bulletin as they may easily be found in relevant journals or in published proceedings. It would, however, be useful to include lists (with perhaps brief abstracts) of papers given at conferences. In their present form the reviews are not of great interest or use.

There is recent news of yet another 'International Research Journal' being launched and it seems to me—and no doubt to other readers of the Bulletin—that there are too many different scientific journals. It is much easier to look through one thick journal such as Physics Review, which covers a broad field, than a dozen assorted specialist journals, and the librarians' difficulties are also increased. There seems little point in highly specialized journals unless they collect all the papers in the field.

Practical and Theoretical with Basic Numerical Examples A. Schack (translated from 6th German edition by I. Gutman) London: Chapman and Hall. 1965. Pp. xv + 460. Price £5.

During World War I Professor Dr.-Ing. Alfred Schack was an Officer Prisoner of War in the camp just outside Sheffield and it was there that he occupied his enforced leisure by studying the then novel subject of applied heat transfer. Since then he has devoted his entire life to putting this subject on a sound basis scientifically and at the same time applying the subject to the solution of important industrial problems, especially the multi-tubular recuperative type heat exchanger made with heat resisting steel tubes.

C. E. Swartz Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley. 1965. Pp. xiii + 152. Price 15s.

Within the last three or four years there have been several books attempting to present to readers with only one year of college or university physics some of the latest understanding of the so-called fundamental particles. It is not easy to estimate the value of the popular account of a subject because of the wider than usual variety of criteria—accuracy, clarity, balance of assumed knowledge, aptness of illustrations and analogy, avoidance of the pitfalls of popularization, and even the price!

G. N. Hatsopoulos and J. H. Keenan London: John Wiley. 1965. Pp. xiii + 788. Price 113s.

There can be little doubt that there are a number of different, effective, ways of teaching thermodynamics to students in a manner which is true to the underlying principles of the subject. In recent years, however, these principles have been refined in two ways; firstly by investigating the logical structure of the laws of thermodynamics, regarded as axioms, and secondly by an examination of its relations with quantum and statistical mechanics.

Proceedings of the International Conference held at Copenhagen, Denmark: 1963 (The Journal of Physics and Chemistry of Solids, Supplement 1, 1965). R. F. WALLIS (Ed.) Oxford: Pergamon Press. 1965. Pp. xv + 730 Price £10.

As a rule conference proceedings are not worth publishing in permanent form, but here is an exception. This was the first full-scale international conference to be exclusively concerned with lattice dynamics, and it came after a decade of exciting developments in both experiment and theory.

J. L. Flanagan Berlin: Springer-Verlag. 1965. Pp. viii + 327. $14.50

J. L. Flanagan is as knowledgeable on the subject of speech as any man in the world. He has filled important research roles in the field both at M.I.T. and in the Research Laboratories of the Bell Telephone Laboratories.

J. B. Marion New York: Academic Press. 1965. Pp. xv + 576. Price 92s.

According to the author this text has been designed for a one-year, three-hour course in mechanics for physics students at the advanced (American) undergraduate level. It must be said immediately that any student assimilating the whole of the material presented would have had a most acceptable grounding in the subject.

R. G. J. Miller (Ed.) London: Heyden. 1965. Pp. xii + 164. Price 45s.

This is designed to be a user's manual for the unskilled. As the introduction makes clear, "it is this ... which makes this book necessary, for nowadays a high percentage of scientific workers will want to record infra-red spectra themselves without recourse to the specialist".

J. Goodier and J. W. Meynell London: Mills & Boon. 1964. Pp. viii + 454. Price 25s.

The scope of this book provides basic electrical theory and its application to engineering and physical problems for students who have attained the 'O' level in G.C.E. Starting with the definitions of the fundamental units, the basic electrical quantities are derived.

A. J. Ferguson Amsterdam: North-Holland. 1965. Pp. xi + 214. Price 50s.

The determination of the spin and, in the experimentally more restricted case, the parity of excited nuclear states has kept an increasing number of experimenters busy for the past two decades. Most of the earlier work involved measurements of the angular correlations arising from two successive γ rays emitted by a radioactive isotope.

S. Schonland London: Van Nostrand. 1965. Pp. xii + 298 Price 70s.

This book is reminiscent of the situation which arose at Cambridge some forty years ago, when a distinguished mathematician, long in exile, was recalled to give a series of advanced lectures on group-theory which, it was then realized, was to become basic for the development of the quantum. Today, the emphasis is upon chemical problems, and the aim is to set up a formalism adequate for use in the molecular field—broadly, that which is achieving a status of its own in the domain of chemical physics.

Volume 6 Edited by A. Beer Oxford: Pergamon Press. 1965. Pp. vii + 213. Price 84s.

The advantage that Vistas in Astronomy has over any other astronomical series is that it places almost no restriction on authors. They can express themselves briefly or at length on any topic that has some contact with astronomy whether it be topical or historical, theoretical or technically practical, and without any need to be related to any other article.

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