SCIENCE NOTES.

Otautau Standard and Wallace County Chronicle, Volume II, Issue 100, 2 April 1907, Page 3

SCIENCE NOTES.

A recent order of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad requires locomotive engineers on fast passenger trains to have such acuteness of vision as would enable them to see distinctly distant signals without the use of glasses. An official of the company has this to say m regard to the order: — "A train running sixty miles an hour passes over more than 80ft of distance m one second ; at Seventy miles per hour over more than 100 ft per second ,- and should it happen, as it doubtless might, that an engineer m charge of such a train, running at such a speed, was required to remove his spectacles to wipe the steam or mist from them, or should they become broken or fall off, and he be required to take time to get another pair to put on, for each second of time he was so occupied his train would be running at a high speed, and it might pass signals or obstructions which the failure on his part to notice might be fatal ; and because of this particular fact the company felt impelled, m the interest of safety only, to take the position they did take." A queer little anitmal is the one called the " slipper animalcule/ but which men of science call " Paramoecium." The most wonderful thing about this little creature is the rapidity with which it multiplies. By a beneficent provision of nature they seem to. become exhausted and die after the 170 th generation. A naturalist points out that it a Paramoecium family should have a run of luck, and all members live for 350 generations } they would crowd every other living thing off the earth, and be themselves m bulk bigger than the whole planet ; while if they were to have luck enough to survive the 900 th generation, the sun, moon, and stars would be floating m a universe of them. These little creatures are plentiful m stagnant water. Lord Kelvin says of the atom : — " If we raise a drop of water to the size of the earth and raise the atom m the same proportion, then will it be some place between the size of a marble and a cricket ball." "If you fill," says an American scientist, " a tiny vessel one centimetre cube (about fin) with hydrogen corpuscles you can place therein — m round numbers — 525 octillions of them. If these corpuscles are allowed to run out of the vessel at the rate of 1,100 per second, it will require 17,000,000,000,000 of years to empty. Such a computation seems almost like trifling with science — indeed, apparently, trifling with the human intellect — but it is with these subtle theories that our physicists are delving into the innermost chamber of the infinitely minute." E .- Some of the noteworthy of the numerous conclusions arrived at by T. J. J. See m an article on the physical constitution of the heavenly bodies, published m ' Astronom. Nachr.,' are the following : — The mean specific heat of the sun must lie be- j tween 0.5 and 6.8 ; it could reach the latter value if all the elements present were I simple as hydrogen. The heat and light from the sun are held tq be obtained from the interior solely by radiation t and not by convection .currents ; the ' gases m the interior are very transparent; but on the photosphere some elements, such as carbon, can give rise to clouds which are non-transparent to light. Based chiefly upon the density at the solar surface, the heat supply of the sun is held to be sufficient to last ten million years at the present rate ; or, taking contraction into consideration, thirty million years. As regards the earth before it had a solid crust, the temperature was probably never sufficiently high for it to be self-luminous. On the major planets the surface temperatures are considered to lie between 300deg and 800deg abs., so that the surface can neither be thought of as rigid nor selfluminuous. These planets are not cooling down at present, but are even becoming hotter. — 'English Mechanic." According to report a Mr Ernest Oldenbourg has recently invented a new telegraphic receiver, "which is sensitive enough to detect those delicate impulses which a pocket battery, such as might be concealed about the person, could send out." This instrument, which is at present known as the "capilliform " receiver, is "more sensitive than the brain." It depends on the curious fact that mercury m a vertical capillary tube — like that of a thermometer — rises and falls when an electric current is passed through it. Thia fact — which would be more accurately expressed by saying that the surface tension of mercury, and therefore the shape of its meniscus, changes under the influence of an electric current — has long been known. Mr Oldenbourg's invention consists m " magnifying it and utilising it m a shape which enables it to be used practically as. the receiving instrument of a telegraphic installation. tts peculiar value is that it will respond to far smaller currents than those at present used ; a mere fraction of a volt is sufficient to work it. Mr Oldenbourg holds, we are i told, that it will be quite possible, with the aid of his new instrument, to make a telegraphic apparatus by wKich anyone walking about a floor could send intelligible messages to a confederate on the ! platform without anyone else knowing I about them. »■■ '-■ 1 A French scientific writer points out that a* mere gain m weight should not m

itself be taken as an indication of improved bodily condition. It is, according to him, rather a question of the density than the quantity of tissue which covers the bones. When increased weight results from increased density, then the health is really improved. In order that this principle may be practically applied, he suggests the use of baths containing a known quantity of water and supplied with appliances for measurement, whereby the density of the immersed body may be calculated, m the manner m which Archimedes ascertained the density of King Hiero's crown of adulterated gold. For electricity still another use has been found — namely, m the launching of vessels. The British battleship Agamemnon, recently launched, slid to the water by this uew method. A series of interlocking levers were connected with the electrical arrangement. The Countess of Aberdeen, who performed the ceremony, turned a wheel which controlled the apparatus, thus closing the circuit and releasing the triggers that held the man-of-war on either hand. The time occupied by the ceremony was very brief. From the instant the countess put her hand to the wheel to the ship's clearing the ways was a matter of but lmin 50sec.