SCIENCE AND INVENTIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 15002, 25 May 1912, Page 4 (Supplement)

SCIENCE AND INVENTIONS.

VALUABLE SCRAP AT PANAMA, j The disposal of scrap iron and useless ! machinery which passed into the possession of the United States on the sale of the canal by the French company has netted the surprising sum of 2,112,000 dollars. In spite of the fact that a considerable amount of the French plant has been overhauled and put in service, nearly 50,000 tons of metal scrap has been shipped to the United States from the Isthmus. THE ALUMINIUM INDUSTRY. Although the early expectations of the wholesale substitution of aluminium for steel and - iron have not, for very good reasons, materialised, it has shown such a perfect adaptability to certain of the arts that the demand for the new alloy has grown enormously. From a production in the United States of less than 100,0001b in 1883, in 1893 the output had grown to 350,0001b, in 1903 to 7,600,0001b, and to-day it is in excess of 50,000,000ib. SOUTH AMERICAN NAVIES. The navies of the South American Republics may not be large, but the individual units, at least of the newer ships, are very powerful. Two battleships now being built in England for Chili will be 28,000 tons in displacement, and of 23; knots speed. They will carry 10 14in guns! in turrets and four 21in torpedo tubes; and they will have a normal coal supply of 3500 tons with 450 tons of oil fuel Their length of 625 ft will render them the longest battleships in existence. ' THE FLIGHT OF BEES. Monsieur Cailles, a French man of science who has made a careful study of bees, declares that to produce somewhat less than a half-pint of honey a single bee must make over 12,000 trips. His calculations are based on the cubic capacity of a section of a hive, the mean length of the journey that a bee makes, the normal load carried on each trip, and other facta. Monsieur Cailles says that in the height of the season the workers of a hive together travel every day an aggregate distance twice as great as the distance from the earth to the moon. DEEP-SEA SOUNDINGS. A peculiar-looking apparatus is the deep- j sea sounding tubes of the present day. It consists of a light iron rod, hollowed at its lower end, passed loosely through a" hole in the centre of a cannon ball weight, ! which is fastened to the line by a couple of links. On the bottom of the ocean bed being touched, the links reverse position, owing to the weight being taken off ; and the cannon ball, or plummet, thus set free, remains on the ground, leaving the light tube only to be drawn up with the I line. In the act of grounding, the open ! end of the tube presses into the bottom, j a specimen of which is thereby obtained, | unless it happens to be rock or coral. HUMAN HAIR ROPES. I If the suggestion of an engineer of \ Antwerp be followed, not only will there : be a great demand for the discarded Chinese pigtail, but pigtails will have to be grown for commercial purposes. The engineer in question states that no material yet known for ropes has the power of resistance which human hair possesses. There is no doubt that among the ancients hair, was used for ship's cables, and the Antwerp engineer has rediscovered the ancient recess. He says that a cord of human air of average thickness is capable, without strain, of supporting nearly 14001b. He suggests that such ropes should be em-1 ployed in the construction of aeroplanes, SECRET OF THE SPHINX. Professor George Andrew Reisner,' of Harvard University, who claims to have solved the riddle of what or who the great Egyptian Sphinx is, now proposes to wrest from it the secret message which, since the \ earliest times, has been supposed to lurk ! in its stony head. He is going, so to speak, to operate on the Sphinx's brain, which is to-day covered with sand. Dr. Reisner, while at work last year in Egypt, we are told (says the New York correspondent of the Daily Telegraph), discovered that the hole, or pit, in the top of the great image's head, which is a likeness of Cephren, the Egyptian ruler, extended 10ft or more down from the upper surface. Believing that the cavity might contain ! treasures of untold value, the Harvard savant made up his mind to prosecute "a search into the hidden mystery at the earliest opportunity. He is accordingly now at Alexandria, whence he will go to test the Sphinx. He has funds from Harvard, and is accompanied by Professor L. j Earle Rowe. PROJECTOMICROSCOPE. An ingenious apparatus, which will do away with much of the tedious and highly eye-fatiguing microscopic work of the medical student, has just been set up in the schools at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London. The invention of a German firm, the apparatus consists of an inverted highpower microscope, arranged in connection with a powerful arc light. When a stained pathological specimen, mounted on a microscopic slide, is placed on a framework between the arc light and the microscope, ; a magnified image of the specimen is j thrown on a white screen. One of the hos- ! pital teaching staff said recently : " With ! the ordinary microscope a demonstrator has to describe a specimen in words or draw a diagram, and then trust to luck that the students, as each in turn peers down the instrument, succeed in recognising the features ho has described. Using the ' projectoscope' he can point to the I different structures, describing them as he goes along, while the members of the class gathered around the instrument see it all at the same time."

CONCERNING CASTOR OIL. The familiar family physiccastor oil— has other uses than. that for which it is usually administered, generally much against the patient's inclination. Castor oil (extracted from the seeds of Ricinus communis) is frequently administered in combination with various other substances to mask the taste. The Bulletin of the Imperial Institute (London) recommends the following methods of preparation among others: —Mixing the oil with milk and evaporating to dryness ; mixing with salts of casein and milk sugar ; making an emulsion with gum arabic and treating with magnesia and lecithin. The oil is used a great deal as a lubricant in India, but on account of its high viscosity this use is generally impracticable in cold countries. Still, it is so used in combination with mineral oils for marine engines and gasoline motors. Tho High visoositv is an advantage in tho lubrication of parts with very rapid rotation, as in motors of aeroplaiies. Soap made of castor oil haa high cleaning . powers, but it is never used for soap-making except in combination with other fats. The addition of castor oil tends to make the soap transparent. In making paint oils, the castor oil is sulphuretted by treating it with concentrated sulphuric acid at a temperature below 95 degrees F.. then neutralising with soda or ammonia. The sulphuretted oil is also used in the preparation of substitutes for indiarubber. The bean of the plant contains a ferment winch splits fats into glycerine and a fatty acid ; this can be extracted and used in tho hydrolysis of various fate. On account of the presence of a poisonous —called ricine—the seed-cake cannot be used as fodder unless the toxic substance is removed or neutralised. This end can be most readily achieved by coagulating the protein by means of steam or by means of a 10 per cent, salt solution. The use of the seed-cake as fodder has not, however, become very extensive. The material is for the most part used as fertiliser. In India the oil is used on the treatment of soft leather, as for thongs ; and the extracted seeds, still containing a considerable amount of the oil, are used not only as a fertiliser, but also for dressing sole-leather, for treating wood to be used in construction, and as a fueL