A nursery school teacher was delivering a station wagon full of kids home one day when a fire truck zoomed past. Sitting in the front seat of the fire truck was a Dalmatian dog. The children began discussing the dog's duties.
"They use him to keep crowds back," said one youngster.
"No," said another. "He's just for good luck."
A third child brought the argument to a close with this comment: "They use the dogs," she said firmly, "to find the fire hydrants."
Gerhard HerzbergBorn 25 Dec 1904; died 3 Mar 1999 at age 94.German-Canadian physicist who was awarded the 1971 Nobel Prize for Chemistry "for his contributions to the knowledge of electronic structure and geometry of molecules, particularly free radicals." He published his first work in molecular spectroscopy at the end of the 1920's. His measurement of how molecules absorb ultraviolet and infrared energy yield information on energy states in molecules, leading to knowledge of their size, shape and other properties. For example, he showed that radicals can drastically change their shape with increasing energy, such as methylene which is linear in its ground state but bent in higher energy states. He also applied spectroscopy in astronomy, identifying molecules in space, planetary atmospheres and comets.« |
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