Abstract
TO an engineer the result of the spontaneous fluctuation of volt age is a noise which is getting in his way, and which he calculates from formulæ which give approximately the result he requires; he knows that he is up against a natural limitation of what he wants to do. The author of the volume now under review takes a novel view; he rather startles the engineer by making the subject of philosophical interest, and by showing that the physicist does not know as much about the subject as the engineer thought he did. The author does not think that theory has caught up with the abundant experimental data, and he has done a remarkable service in collecting such information as is available in a readable way, so that some super-mathematician may be inspired to find a link between atomic data and the nuisance being examined.
Spontaneous Fluctuations of Voltage due to Brownian Motions of Electricity, Shot Effect and Kindred Phenomena
By E. B. Moullin. (Oxford Engineering Science Series.) Pp. viii + 252. (Oxford: Clarendon Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1938.) 17s. 6d. net.
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H., L. Physics. Nature 144, 900 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144900d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144900d0