 The
Impact of Katie's Other Inventions
Color
Gauge:
Measuring
thickness by
matching colors.
While Katie was inventing her "invisible"
glass, she also stumbled upon a system to measure how thick the coatings
that she made on top of her glass were. She saw that soap bubbles
are different colors and discovered that at each place that the soap bubble
is a new color, it is of a different thickness. Before Katie's invention,
the best instruments were ony accurate to a few thousandths of an inch.
Katie's gauge could give measurements down to less than one millionth
of an inch. She made a glass "ruler" to show different colors
corresponding to the thicknesses. Measing a thickness now became
as simple as matching colors.
Because of Katie's invention, metallurgists
can now measure oxide coatings on steel, helping them to classify rocks.
Very importantly, biochemists can measure the swelling of tiny blood corpuscles
and biologists can study the action of antigens upon antibodies.
This lead to the ability to measure the molecular sizes of viruses and
poisons and helped biologists find causes and cures of many diseases.
This also helped during World War I in developing a process to de-ice the
wings of airplanes. It also helped to develop artificial rain-makers,
which was important for the environment.
Katie left further development of
"invisible" glass to other scientists and moved on to make new inventions.
When the U.S. entered World War II in 1941, Katie decided to concentrate
on military projects.
Absorption of Gases by Carbon
Katie's Ph.D. thesis at Cambridge
was written on the topic of Absorption of Gases by Carbon. During
World War I, many gas masks were needed. Gas masks help protect troops
against smoke and other deadly gases. Katie figured out that many
of the poisonous gases that the troops wish to be protected against can
be absorbed by carbon molecules. This helped to make gas masks better.
Smoke Generating Device: Hiding US troops
from the enemy.
The U.S. army would use "smudge pots,"
small pots that created thick smoke. They would create the smoke
to guard them from attack: the smoke would make the army hard to see by
their enemy.
These pots did not work very well,
so Katie invented a machine that was more useful. Katie's machine
created a thick smoke that would not go away too quickly. The machine
used two quarts of oil and spread long-lasting smoke over several acres.
This smokescreen saved the lives of many troops who worked in open spaces
where otherwise they might have been suddenly attacked.
|
