Suits's Law

One afternoon last week in a Manhattan auditorium, 200 members of the American Institute of Electrical Engineering craned forward in their seats. The paper which Dr. Chauncey Guy Suits, young General Electric engineer of Schenectady, was delivering on the nature of electric welding arcs was highly technical, but the accompanying demonstration was spectacular.

Dr. Suits passed a brilliant arc between two electrodes of a welding torch in an atmosphere of hydrogen. This was magnified and projected in color on a frosted glass screen. The engineers saw the images of the electrodes three inches apart, with the broad, vivid flow of the arc two inches wide. Then Dr. Suits produced an arc in an atmosphere of nitrogen. The arc band was pale, thin. But when he stepped up the nitrogen pressure to 1,200 Ib. per sq. in., the arc thickened and brightened until it was indistinguishable from that produced in hydrogen.

The researches that lie behind this performance enable Dr. Suits to predict the shape and behavior of an arc in any gas--and, conversely, to produce identical arcs in different gases by manipulating the pressure. Most of his hearers agreed that he had contributed handsomely to the science of arc welding and some predicted that his work would be discussed in future textbooks under the head of ''Suits's Law of Similitudes."

By making oscillograms of sound waves passing through his arcs. Dr. Suits is able to calculate their temperatures. At nearly 100 times atmospheric pressure, the temperature indicated is about 11,000DEG F., approximately the surface temperature of the sun.

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