BOOK REVIEWS

A. S. THOMPSON and 0. E. RODGERS: Thermal Power from Nuclear Reactors, Chapman and Hall, London, 1956. 229 pp., 58s.

BOTH engineers and physicists commencing the study of reactor designs should find Thermal Power from Nuclear Reactors a useful starting-point for their reading. The engineer is taught the elements of diffusion theory and criticality calculations, the physicist is shown this difficulty of engineering designs, whilst both will see that they have to share the burden of numerical analysis.

The early chapters deal with the nuclear aspects of reactors. A general diffusion equation is deve- loped which leads to an elegant demonstration of this relationship between fait and thermal reactors. The chapter on reactor kinetics displays the numerous problems to be tackled, but gives the reader little confidence in his ability to solve them. The author appeared to have little interest in the subjects of shielding and materials, and nothing new to add. Interest is roused again in the last three chapters dealing with the thermal aspects of reactor designs, though much of this material can be found in standard works on thermodynamics and heat engineering.

The book is an adequate collection of engineering and physical theory for the uninitiated.

R. T. W.

R. D. EVANS: The Atomic Nucleus, McGraw-Hill Book Company, London 1955, xv and 972 pp., f5 9s.

SEVERAL good textbooks on nuclear physics have appeared in the past few years. The present volume based on lectures given at M.I.T., is yet another. The book is aimed at the third year undergraduate or beginner in research into experimental nuclear physics. A detailed discussion is given of the various concepts involved in the study of nuclear structure by means of radioactivity and nuclear reactions. The twenty-eight chapters include such topics as the radius and charge of nuclei, nuclear moments, parity and statistics, nuclear models, nuclear reactions and their cross-sections, and the interaction of charged particles and photons with matter. A welcome and unusual feature is a detailed account, occupying the last three chapters of the book, of the application of the theory of statistics to the measurements made in nuclear-physics investigations.

The size of the volume is largely due to the detail with which the ground is covered: for instance a thirty-page chapter is devoted solely to the mathematical relations relevant to the buildup and decay of radioactive substances. Indeed, in order that the newcomer to the subject should not be somewhat bewildered, a prior perusal of a more concise text is desirable. The mathematical standard demanded is not high-even a knowledge of wave mechanics is not assumed. A large number of interesting problems for the more leisured reader to work out and a thirty-three-page bibliography are other features.

Dr. Evans’s book should prove itself a useful addition to the literature of nuclear physics, comprehensible at undergraduate level, and, on account of the amount of detail included, valuable as a reference text for more advanced readers.

J. E. S.

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