Page:Science (journal) Volume 47 New Series 1918.djvu/22

 carry goods as determined by the Shipping Board.

The Shipping Board also exercises the control of interstate commerce by water, its powers being analogous for water transportation to those which have been exercised by the Interstate Commerce Commission in regard to railroads. However, the powers of the Shipping Board extend beyond those of the Interstate Commerce Commission in that the board is allowed to approve any agreement between common carriers by water concerning rates, accommodations, pooling, limited sailings, and other arrangements; and all agreements thus approved by the board are exempt from the Sherman antitrust law and its amendments.

Under the Shipping Board, there has been organized the Emergency Fleet Corporation with a capital stock of $50,000,000. This corporation has requisitioned all the shipyards of the United States sad all the ships under construction. The ships will be completed in accordance with the directions of the Fleet Corporation. The actual operation of the yards and the finishing of the ships remain with the corporations and persons who previously had them in charge, but the compensation which they are to receive is upon the basis of a fair profit, which is decided by the Fleet Corporation.

The Fleet Corporation is also engaged on a gigantic scale in the construction of additional ship-building plants and in the construction of new ships. This work is largely done not by the Fleet Corporation itself, but under contract. The Emergency Fleet Corporation has announced that the actual building program under contract embraces more than 8,000,000 tons, dead weight capacity.

(To be continued)

THE NOMENCLATURE USED IN COLLOID CHEMISTRY. A PLEA FOR REFORM chemistry is no longer considered as a mere collection of mysterious substances and "abnormal" reactions. It is an important branch of chemical and physical science possessing a fairly well established working basis and is rapidly acquiring new students.

It suffers, however, like all virgin sciences, the affliction of superfluity of terms used to describe essentially the same things, careless and loose use of some expressions, and confusion of nomenclature in general. This condition results in a great handicap to new students. It is very difficult for them to acquire clear conceptions from their first readings of the various works on the subject.

It is time that this matter be taken in hand by some committee of our Chemical Society for the purpose of removing this needless handicap and confusion by defining the various terms used in colloid science, eliminating unnecessary ones and by standardization of the terminology in general, just as was done with the terminology of the proteins by the biological chemists some years ago.

The paragraphs which follow attempt to point out some of the cases of malusage of terms.

No objection can be raised against the word "colloid." It is distinctive, but the use of the expression "colloidal solution" is to be strongly condemned, since it is so evident that substances in the colloidal condition are not dissolved, in the strict sense of the term. Colloidal particles are in a condition midway between solution and mechanical suspension, and they are held in this peculiar state of dispersion by virtue of their surface energy, electrical charge, their kinetic energy as manifested by the Brownian movement, and the adsorbed ions of electrolytes which are essential to the stability of all colloids.

The general term "dispersion," as suggested by Wo. Ostwald, is to be preferred to the special term "solution." E,g., "Mechanical suspensions " are Coarse dispersions, 