SCIENCE NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2818, 18 March 1908, Page 92

SCIENCE NOTES.

—It is interesting to learn that experiment* have Jseen made* in France during the pasi few months with j, new and remarkable projectile for the French navy. It is known as the "luminous shell," aud, although the trials Have been taking place in secret* the naval authorities are known £p have a very high opinion of it. Its peculiarity is thai; _it gives off a flash of light as it strikes its objective, and this will be of value in enabling the marksman at night to correct his aim. :: ~~ — A' section of steel pavement has recently • been ' laid in the Rue St. Martin, Paris, to test "its usefulness. The steel btoeks are nearly Tin long and 1 l-3in thick, - and • are ridged on both sides. They are laid in cement so that the tops of the ridges jusfe reach the surface. The ridges are so .close together that a horse's shce covers at least) | three, ranges of them. It is believed that, such a pavement will prove^ superior tojasp^alt in. being less slip.pery and more djiFable than^a, pavement of , wooden blocks. —In the' past Jew years the smelting .of quartss/£o T>e "easi, into a great variety of vases, capsules, crucibles, hollow balls, tubes, and so fbrth, has assumed con-, siderable industrial importance. Quartz Melted in the electric furnace forma a glass •of iridescent brilliance, with wh : ch many kinds of jewels and ornaments are made. It can be coloured, with great ease, ,tvnd in a, great variety of tones and shades. In laboratories, apparatus made of smelted quartz has become practically indispensab'e. , — The industrial use of the whale involves a wicked waste of material. For instance, from a right whale 50ft long may be obtained 250 barrels of oil and perhaps a ton and three-quarters of whalebone. The remainder of the va-st carcase, some 50 tons, is thrown away as absolutely worthless. There -seems to be a gold mine for anyone With the enterprise and capital to work it. The hide of one whale, spread out, would cover 1500 square feet, and when tanned makes excellent gloves and leather. ~, — -An extraordinary engineering feat has been , accomplished at Antwerp, The entire railway station has been bodily mov^d. The building is on a block 33 metres by 22, and weighs 3000 tons. The distance it was set back was 33 metres, and it was raised a metre and a-half. The building was underpinned, then rolletK back. The work j occupied five months. There was a good i deal of doubt locally as to the eventual ' success, but Mr "Weiss, the engineer, lived in the station with his family the whole time. —In m&ny business offices fire buckets are placed, filled with water in readiness for an emergency. It is seldom that instructions for use are pinned nea-r the supply. The wrong' way to tackle an incipient fire ie usually to hurl the whole contents of a bucket' on the spot. Most of the water is wasted by this means. A heavy sprinkling is more effective. The water may be splashed on the blaze by hand, but a .more usejful sprinkler is a long-haired whitewash brush. One of these should hang beside every nest of fire buckets. — The latest engine of warfare is a specially designed motor car which the German military authorities have produced for ( making war on airships. This motor car is well armoured, and yet has sufficient speed to enable it to follow up a dirigible balloon in a much- better style than horse artillery. Its great feature,, however, is a new gun, which- can be tilted up to an angle of 70deg., and which discharges 24 shots a. minute. Its range is said to, be euch that it can cripple any modern airship, and by the speed of tho car the dirigible balloon can be pursued most effectively. Meantime, however, "military aeronauts are improving their' vessels in r^ing power and speed, and thus they hope to keep in advance ot the artillerists. —An interesting departure has been tecently "made on the Amerika of the Ham-burg-American Line by taking on board a ' special - tank for keeping about a ton of living river ,fish for table use. It was an interesting question whether or not the fish would, -stand the fatigue of the^ea. voyage. A large tank of 5.85 cubic yards capacity (JL4.76£t in length, 3.28 ft in width, and 3.28 ft in. height) had been constructed on the boat deck of the steamer. This tank, which is of iron, and divided into two compartmerrts, was rirotected against the escape of the water in" ' case of heavy oscillations by roofing, as well as by perforated sheet' metal partitions similar to bulkheads. The ■two main compartments of the tank are intended; one for housing trout, and the other for larger fish.. As this experiment has been entirely successful, ocean steamers will in future "be able to carry fresh fish instead • of. the fi^ih preserved in ice, as much as two tons ''being' 'readily etdred in tanks of the ■kind described. ' j -' — Dt Peters, while excavating, has discovered at Bismya, in Central Babylonia, the ' oldest temple in the world. The waJls of a tower were " uncovered ; the summit was cleared, and the. first inscription dis- ■ covered upon the surface was a brick stamped with the name of Dungi, of 2750 B.C. Just beneath it were other Bricks bearing the name of UrGur of 2800 8.C. ; a little lower appeared a crumpled piece of gold with the name of Naram Sin, of 3750 8.C., and just below that level were the large square bricks peculiar to £ar?on, of 380Q 8.C., probably the first of the Semitic kings of. Babylonia. Although Dr Peters had dug but a yard and a-half below the bricks of Dungij he had revealed , several strata extending over the period from 2750 8.C., or more fhan,a thousand years, md still 11 yards of earlier ruins lay beneath. He dug lower; unknown types of bricks appeared, and two and a-half yards from the surface he came upon a large platform constructed of the peculiar plane-convex bricks which' were the building material of 4500 B.C. It is an" old saying that there is noth- • ing new undei. the sun, and from some points of it is a true one. Very few of the ' ideas form the basis of present-day patients are absolutely novel ; they are simply developments of what has gone before. Of all departments of the field of 'invention/ that of improvement on 'old' inventions is "perhaps the most fruitful and- profitable. The records of past patents are full of .bright suggestions, plausible at first sight, <but for some . reason or other not quits reduced to practice. The perfecting of such crude suggestions affords excellent scope for inventive ingenuity. The ' case of the vacuum cleaner is an excellent illustration. In an action at law on the patents for this contrivance, prior specifications were brought forward in nu,ny

respects bearing considerable resemblance to the subject of litigation; but none of these would, in practice, accomplish the desired result in an equally satisfactory manner or enable vacuum cleaning to be carried out economically on a commercial | Bcale, and so ;he validity of the patents was | sustained. No inventor need be deterred from applying for a patent on the ground that it is but An improvement ; if tho improvement actually does improve it may be of more value commercially than something of far greater novelty. — The principle of a lamp recently patented by MM. Santa and Spelmans, of Brussels, depends upon the fact that certain flames, such as that of benzine, are con- | stant in size and intensity so long as the environment remains the same, but are intensified by a gas such as .fire-damp and "reduced by carbon-dioxide. The flame of the lamp is # protected by a casing of wire gauze provided with a series of external cooling ribs, and is surmounted by a chimney of refractory material. Through the opposite sides of this are inserted a series of <elemenfcs forming a thermopile, the outer current from which passes through a galj vanometer, which indicates any yariation in the strength or direction of the current. j Now, if fire-damp gains access to the lamp | the flame becomes longer and hotter, the heat is conveyed to the thermo-elements, and an increase of electro-motive force is indicated by the pointer of the galvanometer. In like manner the reduction in size and intensity of the flame by carbon-dioxide is indicated by a decrease in the electromotive force. The lamp is made in porti able or stationary form, and the sjalvanometer may be connected with a recording apparatus which will show the varying conditions to which the flame has been subjected in different parts of the mine.