SCIENCE OF THE DAY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20668, 13 September 1930, Page 5 (Supplement)

SCIENCE OF THE DAY.

FUEL FROM THE AIR.

Dr. Herbert Levinstein, tho eminent chemist, in his recent presidential address to tho Society of Chemical Industry at Birmingham, suggested that the air might in future supply synthetic fuel. A reference to his remarks appeared on this page last Saturday, and some additional extracts are now given.

Having tapped tho inexhaustible supplies of atmospheric nitrogen, Dr. Levinstein said, the next step was to transform another constituent of the air, carbonic acid, without tho intervention of the plant, and thus to get, without the interval of a geological age, the raw materials now obtained from coal.

Tho complete reduction of carbonic acid to methane (coal gas) had, in fact, been accomplished. It would certainly not be long beforo methane became a valuable raw material of the chemical industry. It could, in turn, bo almost completely converted in tho arc oven into acetylene, and acetylene could be polymerised to a tar about half of which consisted of benzene. Thus they obtained, by the synthetic instead of the geoglocial route, direct access to a now source of the products obtained from coal tar. Tho available raw material thus became inexhaustible, for carbonic acid existed in balanced quantities in tho atmosphere. If time was money, what was tho money value of this reaction in terms of timo? Britain's weakness as a manufacturing country, said Dr. Levinstein, was its dependence on coal for power, instead of on the tides, the water-falls, the wind, tho direct radiation of the sun. Other countries were developing the use of water power for industries on a scale that seemed stupendous ctjmpared with the small scale still predominant in this country. Another ten or fifteen generations would see the exhaustion of the world's principal coal deposits. The age of coal was passing, added Dr. Levinstein. The losses of the Napoleonic wars were soon mado good by the developmeht of steam and coal. The losses of the last war could bo mado good by learning to use moro effectually, the natural forces for industrial work. " This," said Dr. Levinstein, "is precisely the long-rfingo research which the Government can do and ought to do, and does not do. It is costly, but necessary."

NEW FORM OF EXPLOSIVE.

Quito a new kind of explosive, which lias no (lame and is not inflammable, has been invented for the coal miner, and 6hould do something toward lessening his risks. This is a small metal bottle containing carbon dioxide very tightly compressed and a charge of chemicals which is itself fired by an olectric wire. The compressed carbon dioxide, for the time being in liquid form, is suddenly heated by the hot chemicals until it turns again into gas at enormous pressure and blows the steel bottle to pieces. The explosion is slower than that of any of the oxplosives ordinarily used in coal mines, and a good result claimed for this is that the coal comes away in big lumps with far less slack and coal dust.

NEW SORT OF STEAM.

Some timo ago an English writer told how mercury was being used in certain kinds of boilers instead of water, the engine beinjj run with mercury vapour under very high pressure instead of steam. These mercury engines aro still running satisfactorily, although not many of them aro in use. Something much simpler has now been tried and is likely to bo used on a much larger scale. This is a' substance called diphenyl, a compound made of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, which is solid at the ordinary temperature, and boils at a temperaturo two and a-half times that of boiling water. Diphenyl is made as a by-product in petroleum refineries.

TROUBLE FROM THE SEA.

On an electric power lino in South Wales there, were recently some strange unwelcome breakdowns in tho even flow of tho 33,000-volt current over tho pylons and their insulators. They cmno from tho sea. When the engineers, seeking for tho cause of tho puzzling surges of the current, examined the porcelain insulators over which tho cablo was carried tliey found that some of them wero coated w'lh a thin deposit of salt. It had blown in from the, Atlantic. Tho salt coating destroyed tho effectiveness of the insulation and tho current leaked away.

HEARING A WORM EAT.

, It seems strange that it is possible to magnify the noise of a worm eating so that it can be listened to by wireless valves and a loudspeaker, but this has been done by tho Bell Telephone Laboratories. It was done.to test grape fruit. A fly attacks tho fruit, and the larvae tears off morsels of it inside the peel, rendering it unfit for use. The noise of tho larvae eating the fruit is magnified by the testing apparatus, aud bad fruit can bo picked out yery quickly, by its use.