Situated in the middle of the floor of the Gordon McKay Physics Laboratory is a huge mountain of steel tanks, glass tubes, wires, and valves surrounded by a high picket fence. This is the famous cyclotron, known to the uninitiated as the atom smasher.

Heretofore, the inquisitive layman has been forced to stand in awe outside the wooden fence, listening mystified to the dull roar of the great machine. Now, for the first time, he will be able to find out just what is going on inside by reading "Why Smash Atoms?" by Arthur K. Soloman, research associate in Physics and Chemistry, which will be published tomorrow by the Harvard University Press.

Soloman, who has worked on the cyclotrons at Harvard and Cambridge, England, has explained in simple, every-day terms the nature of atoms, the intricacies of the machine, the purpose of smashing atoms anyway, and the results which have been achieved up to date.

Machine Completed Last Fall

The Harvard cyclotron is one of the many atom smashing machines in this country and Europe. It was begun in 1937 under the direction of Kenneth T. Bainbridge, associate professor of Physics, but was not completed until last fall.

In the machine, ions, akin to the particles shot forth by radium and other radioactive elements, are revolved around in a vacuum tank between the poles of a huge magnet at the speed of millions of miles an hour.

They are finally shot like projectiles against a target of another substance, such as sodium, and smash a number of the sodium atoms. This changes the nature of these atoms and makes the sodium radioactive.

The Harvard cyclotron has a power of 37 kilowatts, more than is used in most radio stations. A similar machine in California is capable of producing as much radiation as 700 grams of radium, which would cost tens of millions of dollars.

"Why Smash Atoms"

A partial answer to the question "Why smash atoms?" is obvious from this fact. Radium has long been used in the treatment of cancerous diseases, its chief disadvantage being its often prohibitive expense. The cyclotron can make a simple substance radio-active at comparatively small cost.

The Harvard Physics and Medical Departments are constantly experimenting with more and surer applications of these artificially radioactive elements to the treatment of such diseases as Leukemia and Hodgkins' disease.

In many cases the particles shot forth by artificially radioactive substances are more suited to the treatment of certain diseases than radium. Another advantage of these artificial substances is that they are not as dangerous as radium because of their comparatively short period of activity.

But the primary emphasis in the study of cyclotrons is not on their practical application. As Soloman writes in his book, "A tall building will not stand without a foundation. For new development we must have further knowledge. Fundamental research often leads to developments which have immediate practical application in the increase of well being or the relief of sickness. That is why we smash atoms."