and it will instantly burn. If iron filings be thrown upon red hot
nitre, they will detonate and burn.
Water of Different Temperatures in the Same Vessel.
Of heat and cold, as of wit and madness, it may be said that “thin
partitions do their bounds divide.” Thus, paint one half of the surface
of a tin pot with a mixture of lamp black and size, and leave the other
half or side bright; fill the vessel with boiling water, and by dipping
a thermometer, or even the finger, into it shortly after, it will be
found to cool much more rapidly upon the blackened than the bright side
of the pot.
Warmth of Different Colors.
Place upon the surface of snow, as upon the window-sill, in bright
daylight or sunshine, pieces of cloth of the same size and quality, but
of different colors, black, blue, green, yellow and white; the black
cloth will soon melt the snow beneath it, and sink downwards; next the
blue, and then the green; the yellow but slightly; but the snow beneath
the white cloth will be as firm as at first.
Laughing Gas.
The above fanciful appellation has been given to nitrous oxide, from
the very agreeable sensations excited by inhaling it. In its pure state
it destroys animal life, but loses this noxious quality when inhaled,
because it becomes blended with the atmospheric air which it meets in
the lungs. This gas is made by putting three or four drams of nitrate
of ammonia in crystals into a small glass retort, which being held
over a spirit lamp, the crystals will melt, and the gas be evolved.
Having thus produced the gas, it is to be passed into a large bladder
having a stop-cock; and when you are desirous of exhibiting its effects
you cause the person who wishes to experience them to first exhale
the atmospheric air from the lungs, and then quickly placing the cock
in his mouth you turn it, and bid him inhale the gas. Immediately a
sense of extraordinary cheerfulness, fanciful flights of imagination,
an uncontrollable propensity to laughter, and a consciousness of being
capable of great muscular exertion, supervene. It does not operate
in exactly the same manner on all persons; but in most cases the
sensations are agreeable, and have this important difference from those
produced by wine or spirituous liquors, that they are not succeeded by
any depression of mind.
Magic Vapor.
Provide a glass tube about three feet long and half an inch in
diameter; nearly fill it with water, upon the surface of which pour a
little colored ether; then close the open end of the tube carefully
with the palm of the hand, invert it in a basin of water, and rest the
tube against the wall. The ether will rise through the water to the
upper end of the tube; pour a little hot water over the tube, and it
will soon cause the ether to boil within, and its vapor may thus be
made to drive nearly all of the water out of the tube into the basin.
If, however, you then cool the tube by pouring cold water over it, the
vaporized ether will again become a liquid, and float upon the water as
before.
Gas from the Union of Metals.
Nearly fill a wine glass with diluted sulphuric acid, and place in it a
wire of silver and another of zinc, taking care that they do not touch
each other, when the zinc will be changed by the acid, but the silver
will remain inert. But cause the upper ends of the wires to touch each
other, and a stream of gas will issue from them.
Green Fire.
A beautiful green fire may be thus made: Take of flour of sulphur
thirteen parts, nitrate of baryta seventy-seven, chlorate of potash
five, metallic arsenic two, and charcoal three. Let the nitrate
of baryta be well dried and powdered; then add to it the other
ingredients, all finely pulverized, and exceedingly well mixed and
rubbed together. Place a portion of the composition in a small tin
pan, having a polished reflector fitted to one side, and set light to
it, when a splendid green illumination will be the result. By adding a
little calamine it will burn more slowly.
Combustion of Three Metals.
Mix a grain or two of potassium with an equal quantity of sodium; add
a globule of quicksilver, and the three metals, when shaken, will take
fire and burn vividly.
To Make Paper Apparently Incombustible.
Take a smooth cylindrical piece of metal, about one inch and a half in
diameter, and eight inches long. Wrap very closely round it a piece of
clean writing paper, then hold the paper in the flame of a spirit lamp,
and it will not take fire. But it may be held there for a considerable
time without being in the least affected by the flame. If the paper be
strained over a cylinder of wood it is quickly scorched.
Heat Not to be Estimated by Touch.
Hold both hands in water which causes the thermometer to rise to ninety
degrees, and when the liquid has become still, you will be insensible
to the heat, and that the hand is touching anybody. Then remove one
hand to water that causes the thermometer to rise to two hundred
degrees, and the other in water at thirty-two degrees.
After holding the hands thus for some time remove them, and again
immerse them in the water at ninety degrees. Then you will find warmth
in one hand and cold in the other. To the hand which had been immersed
in the water at thirty-two degrees, the water at ninety degrees will
feel hot; and to the hand which had been immersed in the water at two
hundred degrees, the water at ninety degrees will feel cool. If,
therefore, the touch in this case be trusted, the same water will be
judged to be hot and cold at the same time.
Flame Upon Water.
Fill a wine glass with cold water, pour lightly upon its surface a
little ether; light it by a slip of paper, and it will burn for some
time.
Rose-colored Flame Upon Water.
Drop a globule of potassium, about the size of a large pea, into a
small cup nearly full of water containing a drop or two of strong
nitric acid; the moment that the metal touches the liquid it will float
upon its surface, enveloped with a beautiful rose-colored flame, and
entirely dissolve.
Currents in Boiling Water.
Fill a large glass tube with water, and throw into it a few particles
of bruised amber or shreds of litmus; then hold the tube by a handle
for the purpose, upright in the flame of a lamp, and as the water
becomes warm it will be seen that currents, carrying with them the
pieces of amber will begin to ascend in the center, and to descend
towards the circumference of the tube. These currents will soon become
rapid in their motions, and continue till the water boils.
Hot Water Lighter than Cold.
Pour into a glass tube, about ten inches long and one inch in diameter,
a little water colored with pink or other dye; then fill it up
gradually and carefully with colorless water, so as not to mix them;
apply heat at the bottom of the tube, and the colored water will ascend
and be diffused throughout the whole.
Expansion of Water by Cold.
All fluids except water diminish in bulk till they freeze. Thus, fill
a large thermometer tube with water, say of the temperature of eighty
degrees, and then plunge the bulb into pounded ice and salt, or any
other freezing mixture; the water will go on shrinking in the tube
till it has attained the temperature of about forty degrees, and
then, instead of continuing to contract till it freezes, it will be
seen slowly to expand, and consequently to rise in the tube until it
congeals.
In this case the expansion below forty degrees and above forty degrees
seem to be equal, so that the water will be of the same bulk at
thirty-two degrees as at forty-eight degrees, that is, at eight degrees
above or below forty degrees.
The Cup of Tantalus.
This pretty toy may be purchased at any optician’s for seventy-five
cents. It consists of a cup in which is placed a human standing figure
concealing a syphon or bent tube, with one end longer than the other.
This rises in one leg of the figure to reach the chin, and descends
through the other leg, through the bottom of the cup to a reservoir
beneath. If you pour water in the cup it will rise in the shorter leg
by its upward pressure, driving out the air before it through the
longer leg; and when the cup is filled above the bend of the syphon,
that is, level with the chin of the figure, the pressure of the water
will force it over into the longer leg of the syphon, and the cup
will be emptied, the toy thus imitating Tantalus, of mythology, who
is represented by the poets as punished in Erebus with an insatiable
thirst, and placed up to the chin in a pool of water, which, however,
flowed away as soon as he attempted to taste it.
The Magic Whirlpool.
Fill a glass tumbler with water, throw upon its surface a few fragments
or thin shavings of camphor, and they will instantly begin to move, and
acquire a motion both progressive and rotary, which will continue for
a considerable time. During these rotations if the water be touched
by any substance which is at all greasy, the floating particles will
quickly dart back, and, as if by a stroke of magic, be instantly
deprived of their motion and vivacity.
In like manner, if thin slices of cork be steeped in sulphuric ether in
a closed bottle for two or three days, and then placed upon the water,
they will rotate for several minutes, like the camphor, until the
slices of cork, having discharged all their ether, and become soaked
with water, they will keep at rest.
If the water be made hot the motion of the camphor will be more
rapid than in cold water, but it will cease in proportionately less
time. Thus, provide two glasses, one containing water at fifty-eight
degrees, and the other at two hundred and ten degrees; place raspings
of camphor upon each at the same time; the camphor in the first glass
will rotate for about five hours, until all but a very minute portion
has evaporated, while the rotation of the camphor in the hot water
will last only nineteen minutes. About half the camphor will pass off
and the remaining pieces, instead of being dull, white and opaque,
will be vitreous and transparent, and evidently soaked with water.
The gyrations, too, which at first will be very rapid, will gradually
decline in velocity until they become quite sluggish.
The stilling influence of oil upon waves has become proverbial. The
extraordinary manner in which a small quantity of oil instantly spreads
over a very large surface of troubled water, and the stealthy manner in
which even a rough wind glides over it must have excited the admiration
of all who have witnessed it.
By the same principle a drop of oil may be made to stop the motion of
the camphor, as follows: Throw some camphor, both in slices and in
small particles, upon the surface of water, and while they are rotating
dip a glass rod into oil of turpentine. Then allow a single drop
thereof to trickle down the inner side of the glass to the surface of
the water. The camphor will instantly dart to the opposite point of the
liquid surface, and cease to rotate.
If a few drops of sulphuric or muriatic acid be let fall into the
water, they will gradually stop the motion of the camphor, but if
camphor be dropped into nitric acid, diluted with its own bulk of
water, it will rotate rapidly for a few seconds and then stop.
If a piece of the rotating camphor be attentively examined with a lens,
the currents of the water can be well distinguished, jetting out,
chiefly from the corners of the camphor, and bearing it round with
irregular force.
The currents, as given out by the camphor, may also be seen by means of
the microscope; a drop or two of pure water being placed upon a slip
of glass, with a particle of camphor floating upon it. By this means
the current may be detected, and it will be seen that they cause the
rotations.
A flat watch-glass may be employed, raised a few inches and supported
on a wire ring, kept steady by thrusting one end into an upright piece
of wood like a retort stand. Then put the camphor and water in the
watch-glass, and place under the frame a sheet of white paper, so that
it may receive the shadow of the glass, camphor, etc., to be cast by a
steady light, placed above, and somewhat on one side of the watch-glass.
On observing the shadow, which may be considered a magnified
representation of the object itself, the rotations and currents can be
distinguished.
Fire Under Water.
Put thirty grains of phosphorus into a bottle which contains three
or four ounces of water. Place the vessel over a lamp and give it a
boiling heat. Balls of fire will soon be seen to issue from the water
after the manner of an artificial firework, attended with the most
beautiful coruscations.
To Light Steel.
Make a piece of steel red in the fire, then hold it with a pair of
pincers or tongs; take in the other hand a stick of brimstone and touch
the piece of steel with it. Immediately after their contact you will
see the steel melt and drop like a liquid.
A Test of Love.
Put into a phial some sulphuric ether, color it red with alkanet, then
saturate the tincture with spermaceti. This preparation is solid ten
degrees above freezing point, and melts and boils at twenty degrees.
Place the phial which contains it in a lady’s hand and tell her that if
in love, the solid mass will dissolve. In a few minutes the substance
will become fluid.
An Egg Pushed Into a Wine Bottle.
To accomplish this seemingly incredible act requires the following
preparation: You must take an egg and soak it in strong vinegar, and
in process of time its shell will become quite soft so that it may
be extended lengthways without breaking; then insert it into the
neck of a small bottle, and by pouring cold water upon it, it will
reassume its former figure and hardness. This is really a complete
curiosity, and baffles those who are not in the secret to find out
how it is accomplished. If the vinegar used to saturate the egg is
not sufficiently strong to produce the required softness of shell,
add one teaspoonful of strong acetic acid to every two tablespoonfuls
of vinegar. This will render the egg perfectly flexible, and of easy
insertion into the bottle, which must then be filled with cold water.
A Chemical Fountain.
Take two small glass jars and close them with corks. In each of these
pierce two holes and introduce a glass tube curved in the form of a
lengthened V. The two extremities of this tube must not reach further
than just a little below the inner surface of the corks. In one jar
pour water until it is three-quarters full, and pass through the second
hole of the cork a straight glass tube, open at both ends and reaching
nearly the bottom. This jar must be hermetically corked. (If necessary,
seal the top.) In the other jar put some chalk, and in the second hole
of the cork, left free, pass the extremity of a paper funnel in which
you place a pellet of wax or putty.
Your apparatus thus being ready, through the funnel pour some vinegar,
or better still, some sulphuric acid. The latter ingredient coming in
contact with the chalk, forms carbonic acid, which, not being able to
escape through the funnel closed by the pellet, passes through the
curved tube into the other jar and is dissolved in the water.
[Illustration]
After some time a strong pressure will be exercised on the liquid, and
the water rising rapidly up through the vertical tube, will spout out
as from a fountain.
This experiment may be varied and reduced to a simpler one. Take one
jar, fill it up two-thirds with water, and fit it with a cork with two
holes, through which pass two tubes; the one going to the bottom, the
other resting just over the surface of the liquid. The latter should be
fitted with a receiver.
Seal the cork so as to render it air-tight. In the top receiver pour
water, which will go down into the jar and raise the level of the water
already contained in it.
The air, being compressed, will act upon the liquid mass in the lower
jar, and the water will escape through the free tube in a jet with more
or less force according to the pressure exercised.
Weighing Gases.
Do not be cast down because you see another term to be explained. A
gas is, you may have already guessed, simply a fluid. Matter exists in
three states, solid, liquid and gaseous. Everything can exist in these
three states under different conditions of heat and pressure.
For instance, ice, water, and steam are precisely the same thing, a
mixture of oxygen and hydrogen, though in different states. Hence steam
is simply the gaseous form of ice or water. Now some gases are heavier
than air, and among them is carbonic acid, a gas given off from the
lungs in breathing.
By means of a very simply-constructed balance, you can prove this gas
to be heavier than air. Sounds queer, doesn’t it? to talk of weighing
something that you cannot handle or see.
It is not difficult to do. Bend some wire, minding that the beams of
the balance are curved as in the figure.
For one side of the scales a strong cardboard box will answer
admirably; for the other the lid of a round box will serve. Hang the
whole on a string and adjust it by putting some grains of sand in the
round scale on which the weights are placed, to make each side balance
one another and the scales are ready for use.
[Illustration]
The production of carbonic acid is easy. Pour a little sulphuric acid
and water over some chalk. Collect the gas given off in a bottle or
jar. In doing so you need not be afraid that it will escape, since it
is heavier than the air.
In pouring it in the box of the scale, you will see the box sink down,
which is clearly an indication that the gas, which has just been poured
into the scale is heavier than the air, whose place it has taken. This
experiment may be tried in other curious ways.
In Water but not Wet.
With some lycopodium, powder the surface of a large or small vessel of
water; you may then challenge any one to drop a piece of money into
the water, and that you will get it with the hand without wetting your
skin. The lycopodium adheres to the hand, and prevents its contact
with the water. A little shake of the hand after the feat is over will
dislodge the powder.
Image of a Volcano.
This is another experiment on the density of liquids. In a small jar
put some wine or colored alcohol, and close it with a cork, through
which you have passed a small tube, a quill or a hollow straw. In
lowering this jar gently in a pail full of water, you will soon see the
liquid escape and rise to the surface of the water, describing spirals
which resemble smoke, and give a pretty good image, considerably
diminished, of a volcano.
Reciprocal Images.
Make two holes in the wainscot of a room, each a foot high and ten
inches wide, and about a foot distant from each other. Let these
apertures be about the height of a man’s head, and in each of them
place a transparent glass in a frame like a common mirror.
Behind the partition, and directly facing each aperture, place two
mirrors inclosed in the wainscot, in an angle of forty-five degrees.
These mirrors are each to be eighteen inches square, and all the space
between must be inclosed with pasteboard painted black, and well closed
that no light can enter; let there be also two curtains to cover them,
which you may draw aside at pleasure.
When a person looks into one of these fictitious mirrors, instead
of seeing his own face, he will see the object that is in front of
the other; thus, if two persons stand at the same time before these
mirrors, instead of each seeing himself, they will reciprocally see
each other.
There should be a sconce with a lighted candle placed on each side of
the two glasses in the wainscot, to enlighten the faces of the persons
who look in them, or the experiment will not have so remarkable an
effect.
Imitation of Animal Tints.
To accomplish this metamorphosis, it is necessary to have earthen
vases which have little edges or rims near their mouths, and should
be of a size sufficiently large to hold suspended the bird or flower
which you intend placing in them. You should likewise be provided
with stoppers of cork, of a diameter equal to that of their mouths.
To make an experiment upon some bird, it is necessary to commence by
making a hole in the stopper, sufficiently large to contain the neck
of the bird without strangling it. This done, you divide the diameter
of the stopper into two equal parts so as to facilitate the placing
of it around the neck without doing injury to the bird. The two parts
being brought together, you place at the bottom of the vase an ounce
of quicklime, and beneath that a quarter of an ounce of sal ammoniac.
When you perceive the effervescence commence to take place, you
promptly insert the stopper, to which the bird is attached, leaving the
neck outside. The plumage of the body, exposed to this effervescent
vapor, will become impregnated with the various colors produced by this
chemical combination.
Melting a Coin.
Fix three pins in the table and lay the piece of money upon them; then
place a heap of the flour of sulphur below the piece of money, and
another above it, and set fire to them. When the flame is extinct, you
will find on the upper part of the piece a thin plate of metal, which
has been detached from it.
Explosive Gas.
Mix two drachms of the filings of iron with one ounce of concentrated
spirit of vitriol in a strong bottle that holds about a quarter of a
pint; stop it close, and in a few moments shake the bottle; then taking
out the cork, put a lighted candle near its mouth which should be a
little inclined, and you will soon observe an inflammation arise from
the bottle, attended with a loud explosion.
To guard against the danger of the bottle bursting, the best way would
be to bury it in the ground and apply the light to the mouth by means
of a taper fastened to the end of a long stick.
Cold from Evaporation.
Ether poured upon a glass tube in a thin stream will evaporate and cool
it to such a degree that water contained in it may be frozen.
Self-Dancing Egg.
Fill a quill with quicksilver; seal it at both ends with good hard wax;
then have an egg boiled; take a small piece of the shell off the small
end and thrust in the quill with the quicksilver; lay it on the ground
and it will not cease tumbling about as long as any heat remains in it;
or if you put quicksilver into a small bladder and blow it up, then
warm the bladder, it will skip about as long as heat remains in it.
Flash of Fire in a Room.
Dissolve camphor in spirits of wine and deposit the vessel containing
the solution in a very close room, where the spirits of wine must
be made to evaporate by strong and speedy boiling. If any one then
enters the room with a lighted candle the air will inflame, while the
combustion will be so sudden and of so short a duration as to occasion
no danger.
Cast Iron Drops.
Bring a bar of iron to a white heat and then apply to it a roll of
sulphur. The iron will immediately melt and run into drops.
The experiment should be performed over a basin of water, in which
the drops that fall down will be quenched. These drops will be found
reduced into a sort of cast iron.
Explosion without Heat.
Take a crystal or two of the nitrate of copper and bruise them; then
moisten them with water and roll them up quickly in a piece of tinfoil,
and in half a minute or little more, the tinfoil will begin to smoke
and soon after take fire and explode with a slight noise. Unless the
crystals of the nitrate of copper are moistened, no heat will be
produced.
Fiery Powder.
Put three ounces of rock alum and one ounce of honey or sugar into a
new earthen dish, glazed, and which is capable of standing a strong
heat; keep the mixture over the fire, stirring it continually until it
becomes very dry and hard; then remove it from the fire and pound it
to a coarse powder. Put this powder into a long-necked bottle, leaving
a part of the vessel empty; and having placed it in the crucible, fill
up the crucible with fine sand and surround it with burning coals.
When the bottle has been kept at a red heat for about seven or eight
minutes, and no more vapor issues from it, remove it from the fire,
then stop it with a piece of cork; and, having suffered it to cool,
preserve the mixture in small bottles, well closed.
If you unclose one of these bottles and let fall a few grains of this
powder on a bit of paper, or any other very dry substance it will first
become blue, then brown, and will at last burn the paper or other
substance on which it has fallen.
Illumination.