Recent Advances in Physics

Abstract

I N SUCH a short summary it is impossible to cover completely the developments in physics during the past year. No attempt has been made, therefore, to do more than report briefly on a few of the important fields of research. In addition, because of the present European war much of the work in foreign laboratories has been deferred or abandoned. What is here presented is for this reason mainly taken from articles published in American journals. During the last decade there has been an interesting challenge to technique in the hypothesis that if the well-established rules of physical optics apply to the matter waves associated with particles such as electrons, then a microscope which employs these matter waves in place of those of light should have a theoretical limit, of resolution of the order of 10-8 cm. Now, after several years of development, the electron microscope is emerging from a scientific curiosity into a powerful ...