SCIENCE GOSSIP.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1260, 23 April 1896, Page 13

SCIENCE GOSSIP.

A VIBRATING HELMET. A vibrating helmet, for the cure of nervous headaches, lias been devised by a French physician. It is constructed of slips of steel, put in vibration by a small ( electro-motor, which makes 600 turns in a minute. Tho sensation, which is described _ as not unpleasant, produces drowsiness; ' the patient falls asleep under its influence, : and awakes to find that the pain lias ceased. I'HOTOGEAPILING THE VOICE. To photograph the human voice, or rather tho vocal chords in action, is tho latest scientific triumph. A method of voice analysis has also been discovered, which it is declared will make it possible for a singer to see every tone in his voice. Doth these inventions are likely to prove of the utmost, utility. On becoming widespread, it may not be too much to hope that they will have the effect of diminishing the number of people who suppose that they have voices and verily have them not. A NOVEL CYCLE. Still another winter cycle. The latest machine has two runners, one ahead of the other, and between them is a pair of treadles precisely like those of the bicycle. Fiom these to a heavy balance-wheel in the rear runs the sprochet chain, and this wheel turns a small driving wheel with spurs to stick into the snow. It is the hope of the inventor that it will be possible with this machine to travel over hard-beaten country roads with as much ease and no more bodily discomfort than is experienced on an ordinary bicycle. If such is his ambition we might suggest that lie is likely to meet with considerably disappointment. UHLLET TROOE VESTS. It is not-, we believe, generally known that in the Chino-.lapanese war the Japanese troops were provided with bullet-proof vests. YYo are informed, however, on an authority which can only be regarded as reliable, that much of the disparity in the losses of tho two combating nations was due, partly, no doubt, to the bad markmanrihip of the Chinese troops, but to an c\en greater extent to tho efficacy of tho shields with which tho Japanese were clothed. These bullet-proof clothes consisted solely of silk floss worn beneath the ordinary uniform. Tho material was, in tact, supplied to the soldiers merely with the idea of affording them warmth and not with any intention of granting them .partial immunity from the bullets of their antagonists. 4\ hatever may have boon tho original intention of the silk floss, however, tliiT result was the same, and it is not unnatural to suppose that protection of this simple nature will, in future, form part of the equipment of every well-organised ! fighting army. 1 ALLUMINUM Cl > FEINS. Alluminum coffins costing from £l5O to i £2OO are now in great demand in the United Status. They have among other things this advantage that they are light ! to carry. horse chestnut. ' Etymologically speaking, the word horsechestnut has nothings whatever to do with i horses. A Frenchman, however, has made the discovery that horse-chestnuts are i ;m J undoubted cure for broken-winded animals. a noox for the doctors. A doctor’s ulster has been designed, tho ! 15niii' r of which is fitted with a maize of ’ pockets adapted for the reception of the hundred and one surgical instiuments and drugs with which a physician is obliged to 1 be provided. , pneumatic messages. The pnuinatie system for the transmission ’ of messages is utilised to a much larger ex--1 tent in Paris than it is in London. It is 1 now proposed to employ the pneumatic ’ tube to convey all letters from the munici- ' pal post offices to the railway stations. The plant will cost rather more than ' £30,000. ’ A SEVERE TEST. } The gun-carriage that survives the tests ' given it before its acceptance by tho ordnance inspectors of the German army need , n ,-,t fear the emergencies of an actual campaign. Near the arsenal at ' \|: in ,j, iu , a track lias been hunt, covered . j with ail sorts of obstacles. It lr in imitation of Imd roads atone part, is crossed, by ( ; 11 1 i 1(• 1 i at another, and 1 Imre are realistic ’ I imitations of mountain passes and ravines, i The motive power is a- cabl", to which the is aUiidxJ'l, and 11 if *ll sLutcu. Giromdi the ordeal, officers running alongside and noticing the behaviour of the r carriage undei difficulties. , WHAT IS EIRE '■ No eye, says a scientific writer, lias ever semi real fire. The flame is leaping in ! strainm fantastic form, fifteen or twenty 1 inches upward from the coal and with it 1 j.sa'’o<’d deal of black, sooty smoke, lho 1 sooty smoke and the flames are one and the same, with only a difference of temperature. The soot which forms the ! Hume is red hot. Every particle of the j flame is a red hot coal or a particle of cai- ’ I bon. The real fire we do not see. The in- , I Gant that the carbon atoms become really j burned, eaten up by the oxygen ofcomi bust ion, they are invisible. in burning ! tin', o | .Guilds of carbon, the boated state oi | which gives us flame, the lire work is done by ei'dit pounds of oxygen, 'iho oxygen we do not see. The carbon wo only see j uni before it is burned; and the result of t hob u ruin'-’' is eleven pounds of tho compound of "oxygen and carbon which is invisible.