The following article is based on this year’s Retiring Presidential Address of the American Physical Society, presented on January 23 during the 1964 annual meeting of the Society in New York by John H. Williams of the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Minnesota. Professor Williams, whose term as president of the APS ended during the meeting, served as an Atomic Energy Commissioner in 1959–60.
One of the objectives of nuclear physics is to acquire a better understanding of nuclear forces. The understanding of nuclear forces can be enhanced by investigations of the effects of the nuclear spins of the interacting particles. To make such investigations when protons are interacting with nuclei, one wishes to have available a beam of protons whose spins are oriented in a chosen direction, i.e., a beam of polarized protons. By scattering these protons from nuclei, one can investigate the nature and strength of the spin‐orbit force which is required by most phenomenological theories of the nucleus, particularly the shell model.
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With strong magnetic fields and intense lasers or pulsed electric currents, physicists can reconstruct the conditions inside astrophysical objects and create nuclear-fusion reactors.
A crude device for quantification shows how diverse aspects of distantly related organisms reflect the interplay of the same underlying physical factors.