PHYSICS FOR THE FUTURE
Expansion of Wilder Hall, as Part of Hopkins War Memorial Program, Will Meet an Urgent Need Now and Bigger Demands of Tomorrow
THE DATE on the cornerstone of Wilder Laboratory is 1898. The discovery of X-rays was made public at the beginning of 1896 (some of the best of the early pictures were taken in the old physics lab in Reed Hall by the Frosts) but no one was sure just what they were or what was their future for science. Radioactivity had been announced in 1896, but the spectacular activity associated with radium and the Curies was still to come. J. J. Thomson was just completing his proof of the existence and nature of the electron while the plans for Wilder were being drawn. Radio was a word not yet invented in 1898, though laboratory experiments with electric waves had already been performed. Nuclear physics, with all its tremendous implications, had not yet come over the horizon.
Wilder Hall provided adequately for the needs of physics and the size of the College of that time, but the mark of its own era is seen in the small number of electrical lines running to the main switchboard. It could hardly be foreseen that a whole new era of unprecedented expansion in the field of physics was about to begin, or that the College would quadruple in numbers. Some extra room was provided, but that space was fully utilized many years ago.
Next to the office provided for the senior professor was a large private research room, and it was there that the famous experiments on the pressure exerted by light were performed by Nichols and Hull in the early years of the laboratory. But some who were in our radio courses will remember the crowded condition of this most versatile room in later years. Experimental investigations into radio circuits, quartz crystals, and cosmic rays had superimposed upon them apparatus for elementary and advanced radio courses and the contents of a storage warehouse for miscellaneous apparatus. A large part of the whole top floor of the enlarged and reconstructed laboratory, which this article will describe, will be devoted to the things which sprouted from this one room over the course of years; laboratories for ordinary radio, ultra-high-frequency work, elementary and advanced electronics, and nuclear physics are provided.
One feature of laboratory construction in 1898 was good brick work—good bricks well laid. Wilder Hall is a thoroughly sound structure; the window space is adequate, and the acoustics of the main lecture room are excellent. It would be a great waste of money and material to throw these away and start anew, not to mention the problem of handling classes in the meantime. In 1928 a plan was devised which involved constructing a new building in front of Wilder, utilizing the old building for elementary work and the new building and connecting section for advanced classes and research. For the present plan, which superseded that of 1928, we began by deciding what would be a desirable arrangement for a laboratory, in accordance with certain basic ideas; then we tried to fit the present structure into such a well-coordinated plan, and found it possible to do so.
The new construction will be mainly to the north of Wilder, towards the Medical School, and will be of a type that will harmonize with the older building, which will be little altered except for the removal of a few architectural misfits.
The backbone of the plan, from an operational standpoint, is a series of apparatus rooms, one above another. Storage space, in the course of years, has been seized or adapted in all parts of the old building, sometimes in most inconvenient locations, while in the new arrangement the active rooms have been grouped around the central storage space. Perhaps the elevator may be regarded as the spinal cord of the apparatus room backbone. It opens into these rooms on one side and into the main north-south corridor on the other, and is large enough to accommodate a good-sized rolling table. Apparatus will be stored on the floor on which it will be most frequently used, but even heavy pieces will be readily available anywhere in the building.
On the ground floor, space is provided for the various building services and the main electrical distribution board. Here will be placed apparatus which is very heavy, or which needs especially great stability of support, or uniform temperature. The advanced optics rooms are here, including a grating room at the back where there are no windows, and also a high-potential room extending through two floors. There is no central apparatus room on this floor as most of the apparatus will be permanently located. On the first floor, three fully equipped lecture rooms, the largest of which is the present lecture room, are grouped about the lecture apparatus rooms. The main feature o£ the second floor is a group of three large elementary laboratories, surrounding the laboratory apparatus rooms; and on this floor also, in the old part of the building, are the library and a student conference and study room. The third-floor plan calls for intermediate and advanced laboratories devoted mainly to the broad field of electricity, and, in the old part, photographic darkrooms and laboratories.
On each floor there will be a classroom with a fully equipped lecture desk and blackboards so that it can be used for recitations and lectures for small classes. There will be a "museum" on the first floor and exhibition cases there and elsewhere for student-operated experiments.
The shops, always an important part of a laboratory, will be located in a two-story addition at the south end of the building, beyond a sound-proof wall. The college shop with its heavy machinery and precision instruments will be on the ground floor, and the shop which is used more directly for day-to-day needs on the first floor.
An attempt has been made to provide flexibility for unforeseen changes in the use of the building as new procedures in physics develop. As in many modern laboratories, the rooms are multiples of a basic unit size, and most of the partitions, except the corridor walls, carry no structural load. Changes can therefore be made at relatively little expense; a large room can be subdivided, or two or three small research rooms or offices can be combined.
What is probably a unique feature is the system for distribution of "services," electric circuits, gas, water, etc. These will be carried in ducts and pipes on the floor beams, which are necessarily rather deep because the loads have been taken off the partitions, and will run just beneath a series of plates in the reenforced concrete floors (or in shallow trenches beneath the ground floor). These plates will be placed at short intervals at the sides of the rooms and in the middle part of large rooms, on 10-foot centers. Only such ducts as we think may be needed in the near future will be installed at first, but at any time in the future more branches can be added at T's in the main branch lines and run through the plates to provide new outlets along the walls or at "islands" in the interior of the rooms. No matter what changes may be made in partitions, all services can be made available without any major op erations on walls or floors, and any outlets which are rendered useless by changes can be removed to a new location and the plates replaced. Plates through which connections are not being made can be covered by whatever material is used for the surface coating of the rest of the floor.
The inside walls will be of buff brick tile, and there will be heavy wooden strips permanently fastened to the walls to which apparatus of any kind can readily be attached. The lighting will probably be incandescent, as in some of the recent industrial research laboratories, in order to minimize high frequency interference. There will be fire doors between the new and the old parts of the building, but the old corridors will have new floors to make them fireproof and will be continuous with the new ones. Offices in the old building will not be changed, but all small rooms in the new part will be of a standard pattern so that they can be used interchangeably as offices or research rooms, or for semi-permanent location of standard apparatus.
The advertising which physics has received during the war is not likely to cause a large percent of increase in the total enrollment in physics, but it may well bring a large percent of increase in the small number of men who take advanced courses, especially if we offer improved facilities. These are the men from whom the supply of physicists is actually recruited. The added elementary laboratory and classrooms will enable us to handle larger numbers if necessary, and they will enable us to handle the present number better and more conveniently. More rooms mean that our technicians make fewer changes in laboratory set-ups from day to day, and have more time to improve the apparatus and to set up "push-button" demonstrations for student operation. More lecture rooms mean also that more non-conflicting courses can be scheduled at the same hours, cutting down conflicts with courses in other departments or within our own, and perceptibly increasing the flexibility of schedules and freedom of choice of electives throughout the College.
One of the great improvements which Mr. Thayer of the Board of Trustees urged twenty years ago was more space in which to set up instruments needed only occasionally but difficult to set up and adjust. Having this space means that the staff and students use the instruments whenever it is advantageous instead of only when it is unavoidable, and the time of staff members is saved for productive research. It is a great saving of time if one can move a man from one room to another instead of setting up and taking down apparatus for him continually in the same spot.
As far back as 1928 the Trustees found the need for more physics space and facilities pressing that they authorized expenditures from the general funds of the College for construction purposes, but 1929 put an end to those plans. Now, after a depression and another world war, the College is planning to meet the need which was clearly recognized twenty years ago. We believe we have plans which will enable us to use the present building with the least possible waste, which will enable us to serve the immediate needs of students and staff to much better advantage, and which will at the same time provide great flexibility for our successors to meet the unforeseeable needs of the future.
PROPOSED EXPANSION OF PHYSICS FACILITIES is shown in this architect's drawing of Wilder Hall, with a corner of Steele Chemistry Building seen in the left foreground. The new physics wing, to the left, will house modern laboratory facilities and will be connected with the present building which will be somewhat remodeled in front. Jens Fredrick Larson, College architect, has prepared the new plans.
PHYSICIST-AUTHOR. Prof. Arthur B. Meservey 'O6, Chairman of the Department of Physics, who has written this article on plans for an expanded physics building, is shown in Wilder Hall surrounded by some of the laboratory equipment used in his course on the Principles of Photography. He also teaches an advanced course in Experimental Physics and another in X-Rays.
Professor Meservey's article is the third and final in the series which the MAGAZINE has been running to inform alumni about the three major projects of the Ernest Martin Hopkins War Memorial Program. Earlier articles described the Hopkins Center, proposed new auditorium building, and the Hopkins Scholarships for the sons of Dartmouth men who gave their lives in World War 11.
CHAIRMAN, DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS
