Kenyon College - Reveille Yearbook (Gambier, OH)

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MAJORS IN Peter Weaver Robert F. Koke David (J. Jensen John E. White Joseph A. Wcndel Frederick L. Phillips Robert M. Kastner Myron B. Bloy Robert L. Johnson, Jr. Page 18

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MAJORS IN CHEMISTRY Robert E. Frenkel Experiment Measures A Molecule by Robert Frcnklc, Edited for Reveille OBJECT: To measure the surface pressure of a film on water and to determine the cross- sectional area and the length of a single molecule of that Film. PROCEDURE: A known volume of oleic acid is carefully floated on a large water sur- face. I he acid film formed is then compresset! by a movable barrier connected to a pointer so that a deflection of the pointer is proportional to the resistance of the Film to the barrier. Successive recordings of film resistance per barrier movement arc made until the acid film collapses when additional barrier movements are applied. DISCUSSION: The oleic acid molecules arc free to move in all directions. The molecules arc homogeneously attracted except for the surface molecules which lack upward attraction. These surface molecules are thus less free to move about and consequently tend to form a membrane; however,because of the tendency for the 'heads' of the molecules to dissolve in the water and the ‘tails' not to (Hydrophillic attraction), the oleic acid molecules arc all oriented in the same direction with the hydrophillic attraction between the water and acid at the interface greater than the membrane-forming tendency already mentioned. This ex- plains why a thin film is formed and when this film is under zero compression from the barrier, it may be as- sumed that the film is one molecule thick. Now. knowing the volume and the concentration of the acid, the total number of molecules may be com- puted. The area of the film at zero compression may be arrived at by extrapolating the curve—plotted from bar- rier movement values vs. film resistance—to zero pres- sure. The film is only one molecule thick as already ex- plained; hence the average cross-sectional area of one molecule may be calculated and similarly one may find the length of a single molecule. DATA: 2.00 ml. 0.0011 M Oleic Acid 1.35 x 10 acid mole- cules 67.2 cm- film area at zero pressure 50 x 10 ■ cm cross sectional area of one molecule 7.0 x 10 ■ cm volume of one molecule 1.02 x 10 : cm length of one molecule The results obtained by I. Langmuir arc in fairly close agreement with those in this experiment. Lang- Clyde W. Pinklcy muir: 1.12 x 10 f cm length. Langmuir, J., Am. Chem. Soc., 39, 1869 (1917). MAJORS IN CLASSICS Irresponsible Translators Damage Classics by RAY BENTMAN, Edited for Reveille Fifth century Greek was still an early tongue; the words had not yet acquired the clear-cut denotation so useful to scientific prose. The language seems to bristle with connotation, the meaning almost bursts out of its exterior shell, the sound. Chaucer and Shakespeare had a similar language to work with, but Drydcn, Swift, Johnson, and the more re- cent flood of clear, explicit prose writers have done to English what Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle did to Greek, what is probably inevitable in any language after periods of great poetry; twentieth century English simply cannot stand up under the weight of fifth century Greek poetry. There is further lacking the grandeur of those times, the classical dignity and order so very apparent in Greek tragedy, and the most that the greatest translators can do will be a weak substitute. More specifical- ly there are problems of grammar, syntax, and imagery. The high degree of inflec- tions in Greek permitted a free system of word order that allowed emphasis and shadings unapproachable in English. The optative mood is lost forever and the subjunctive is at best embarrassing. The middle voice can only be reproduced by adding such phrases as “upon himself or for himself, ' which lack the succinctness and clarity of the middle voice. The use of verbals, participles, and infinitives that convey a sense of latent action, the implication of movement without direct statement, must be conveyed into English by long and tiresome clauses or non-verbal adjec- tives. The translator often must choose between double meanings and forever re- move from the reader the opportunity of selection. Much of the Greek imagery is weak to an English-speaking person. The surging billow that meant so much to a sea-faring people has little impression on an Iowan whose knowledge of water is limited to the bathtub. But it isn't enough for a translator to re- sign himself to these drawbacks; he must use every available method to compensate. Far too often the translator has contented himself to throw the problem into the lap of the reader and this single irresponsi- bility has probably done more to discour- age interest in the classics than has the most 'realistic -minded university presi- dent. Raymond Bcntman

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ENGLISH George E. Labalmc James D. Squires Born Offspring of Revolt by Dr. Denham Sutcliffe; Kenyon Professor of linglisb Edited for the Reveille Youth and newness are our national preoccupation. Not today's car is the ideal, but tomorrow's. Our reverence is not for the man of years and wisdom, but for the youth of health and promise. Our effort is not to achieve maturity hut to retain youth, or at least the illusion of it. Our pride less often contemplates our social stability than our mobility, not our community or class but our hope of rising above them. Even an undergraduate may be expected to know that few things are more character- istically American than the assumption that wc are the crowning achievement of a teleological history; what Whitman called the culmination of the scheme.” Mrs. Trol- lope. in the eighteen-twenties, was greeted everywhere with the assumption that she must be overjoyed to escape from benighted London and all the kings into the tobacco- scented air of freedom. The fragrant farmers of Cincinnati were confident that she could have seen no city finer than theirs, no political institutions so divinely ordered as theirs, no independence so surly as theirs. Tocqucvillc, at the same time, was struck with our individualism — a new word, said his translator, to which a novel concept had given birth. The cry of our resplendent newness, hence of our superiority, is everywhere in early American literature and folk-lore. We are the pioneers of the world, cried Melville. God has predestined, mankind expects, great things from our race; and great things we feel in our souls-We are the advance guard, sent on through the wilderness of untried things.” Hawthorne cptiom- ized the popular spirit in the character llolgravc, to whom it seemed “that in this age, more than ever before, the moss-grown and rotten East is to be torn down, and lifeless institutions to be thrust out of the way, and their dead corpses buried, and everything to begin anew. . . . Holgrave might fitly enough stand forth as the representative of many compeers in his native land. I don't think Hawthorne had Emerson in mind when he wrote that, but why should he not have been thinking of the address to Har- vard's chapter of Phi Beta Kappa: Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close. The millions that around us arc rushing into life, cannot always be fed on the sere remains of foreign harvests. Emerson was right, as usual, in saying that our literature and history were in the optative mood. The mood triumphed. Our revolt from orthodoxy has been so successful that it is against the law to discuss religion in the public schools. Wc have so successfully re- volted from aristocracy that the tastes, manners, and speech of a B.A. arc not to be dis- tinguished from those of a street-vendor. Wc have so competently pulled down the moss-grown past that no ten alumni can communicate in shared symbols, or comprehend a reference more remote than to Ingrid Bergman. Having done with highbrowism, literacy is our last requirement of a Congressman or learning of a professor. I am quite of Koko’s mind about 'the idiot who praises with enthusiastic tone, all centuries but this and every country but his own. What I am asking is whether an entire preoccupation with present and future is a fruitful preoccupation, and whether Cicero's remark is less true now than when he made it, that the man who doesn't know what happened before he was born is forever a child. Forgive me if I don't mention everything that happened before you were born; I'll content myself with reminding you of a thing or two. A nation fell off from the univer- sal church. Shortly thereafter, yet another breach sent a body of men to America where Continued on next page Robert L. Westland Melvin E. LaFountaine A. Kandcll McKechnie Thomas C. Woodhury Page 19