Study of the effect of properties of material on vacuum breakdown initiated by laser radiation

In this work, the effect of various properties of materials on vacuum breakdown initiated by laser radiation is considered. Estimating calculations are performed which show that the material of the target electrode distinctly affects the minimum energy of laser radiation needed for igniting a vacuum spark. The experimental studies carried out confirm the estimating calculations, and a number of materials are revealed which can be arranged in order of increase in the energy needed for the formation of breakdown in vacuum by the impact of a laser pulse.     

Teaching the Chemistry of Platinum

Following colonisation of South America by the Spanish, many new naturally occurring substances were sent to Europe. One of these was the silvery, unreactive metal, platinum, discovered in New Grenada in the mid-eighteenth century. It was often found in granular form, associated with gold, and the challenge to chemists was to refine it, produce it as wire or sheet, and determine its chemical properties. This interested the professor of chemistry at the University of Edinburgh, Joseph Black, who was able to obtain samples from London-based Spanish contacts, particularly Ignacio Luzuriaga. This paper examines how Black transmitted his knowledge of the metal to large numbers of students attending his annual course.     

Molecular dynamics study of cluster structure and rotational wave properties in solid-state nanostructures

Molecular dynamics simulation was performed to study the formation of cluster structure, interfaces, and surfaces with different curvature radii in a perfect nanocrystal passed through by a nonlinear wave. It is shown that this process is a type of nanostructure self-organization in response to an external energy flux with subsequent development of a strong rotational field.     

On Neyman–Pearson minimax detection of Poisson process intensity

The problem of the minimax testing of the Poisson process intensity \({\mathbf{s}}\) is considered. For a given intensity \({\mathbf{p}}\) and a set \(\mathcal{Q}\), the minimax testing of the simple hypothesis \(H_{0}: {\mathbf{s}} = {\mathbf{p}}\) against the composite alternative \(H_{1}: {\mathbf{s}} = {\mathbf{q}},\,{\mathbf{q}} \in \mathcal{Q}\) is investigated. The case, when the 1-st kind error probability \(\alpha \) is fixed and we are interested in the minimal possible 2-nd kind error probability \(\beta ({\mathbf{p}},\mathcal{Q})\), is considered. What is the maximal set \(\mathcal{Q}\), which can be replaced by an intensity \({\mathbf{q}} \in \mathcal{Q}\) without any loss of testing performance? In the asymptotic case (\(T\rightarrow \infty \)) that maximal set \(\mathcal{Q}\) is described.