SCIENCE NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2905, 17 November 1909, Page 74

SCIENCE NOTES.

—A New Turbine. — j It is stated in New York that the Westinghoufit Company have , made the im-: portarit.annbunoemenit 'that they have succeeded in constructing an efficient turbine, engine considerably lighter' i-" weigh* than anything hitherto produced. They claim that the new turb&e/ whilst giving equal ■teaming ' efiioienoy, will .ieduce the' cpst of the construction of fast steamers by no less than 2,000,000d01. and if adopted for the new battleships will permit of 14-inch guns being carried. Trams. — The Leeds Tramways ' Committee have instructed the -town clerk of that city to take steps to promote - a bill Lr» Parliament for the construction ot a. system of trackless trams. It -is probable that power will eventually be sought to run- such ■vehicles from -the centre of Leeds as far as DTighlington, but the -present idea ' isto metal such a system, with as little delay is possible, from tihe oity square to FarnJey. — Waterworks in a Desert. — , There is a. large guantitj- of water in the treat desert of Chili, bui none that either Human beings or stock can drink. Science, however, has cdme to the aid of this 'rainless section of "the country in the form of an ingenious desert waterworks, consisting of a aeries of frames containing. 20,000 square feet of glass. The panes of glass are arranged in the shape of a V, and under each pane is a shallow pan containing braofcieh water The heat of . the sun evaporates the water, which condenses upon the sloping glass, and, ma-dc pure by this operation, it runs down into littk channels at the bottom of the V, and is carried *way into the -main oanaL Nearly «■ thousand gallons of fresh water is colleofced daily by this means. — Mexican Herald. — A Puizle to Botanists. — There is a pine tree, in Califorttia which puzzles the world, says a botanist. It pro<iuoes at regular intervals, the usual cones containing seeds, but, strange to say, tfoe cones are to hard that they cannot release their seeds. How does this tree perpetuate its kind ? No one knows, 'true "feeeaa cannot come out; it requires a strong, sharp knife and & heavy hammer to cut toe cone into sections. . More extraordinary still is the fact that th* pine, after producing its aluost invulnerable cones, keeps them hanging on its 'branches year after year." Unless through some peculiar accident, the seeds would apparently remain on the p*Fnnt tree for ever. — Neff Fertiliser Process. — A Gernrau patent has <been granted for a process of making fertilisers by the combination of lime witt» materials containing silica and alumina.' Either natural materials (clay, loam, jnarl, etc.* or artificial -nate-rtals (household refuse, rubbish, soft coal «tnes, etc), kiln-dried if necessary, are mixed rith slaked or unslaked lime, and, in some cases, treated with •superheated steam. Corn-pounds of potash, -puiosphoTus, and nitrogen are also added, according tc ttie character of the other materials ar.-d T-ne lund ot fertiliser desired. line advantages claimed Cor the prccesr- ie vht oneap product ior oi certain ' *compounc silicates, waicn greatly increase vti/z fertil-itj of*, the soil. — Lengo.i of Life Among Anamals. — The maximum length of life of some oi the besc-known animals is as tollows: — Tht horsa lives to a maximum of 25 years, anl tne donkey a like period; the dog doe; not exceed 25 years, the rabbit from eiglu to ten, tiie godSs 30 t the duck, the hen th» turkey » doien yea-rs. Among th< an.<maJß having" the best esta-blisaed repu tatron for longevity «re: The crow, wi^i'ji lives a huncrred years; the parrot and th« elepnant, Which attain an age of 150 years Carp, on the other hand, appear to havi tumped tiheir reputation, waica \vas base< on ill-understood facts from Charrtilly ant l.onfcain«b^au. Tney rarely become cente nansns. The tortoise appears to be t\u aniDial that lives the longest, and the recorc of longevity is surely held by one weigh ing 2bU HcUograras, wnich was presented ii iyjjf^ to the London Zoological Gardens bj A»"al.ter de Rothschild, and ty-hich Is said t< have been born in 1750. — Whicii .« Your Dominant Eye? — It is t : he belief of some experimenter; that we all have a dominant eye. just a< we »re ight of left-handed. One waj o costing thu is to look at some dis tan small bbject witlvfcoth «yes- and then sud de»lj^"*point a.fii^erat itT , Now-.'k^epfn! the firigei ifl /position,- close' first '.dhe gy< and tthen th^ otber, and see- which eye ■ was ttiix dxl» t ne sighting. T.he result o repeated tests tril) otten be surprising. 1; it is found that \t is bhe rig-Hf eye ivhici is doing tne sighting, then it is that ey< wihich is the dominant eye, or It "may 6* the left aye, or in some few cases th< pointing #iU be. found to be bctw-ean " th< two eyes, ft •«' further claimed in thi< theory of a dominant eye toat if the domi narrt eye happens to be tlie best eye, th< otiher eye will not make much of an attemp tc »cc well, and thus a feebleness or in distinctness of vision 'irom aon-use ma; arise, but this theory is not widely applx" able.— Popular Science Sittings. — Britain's Earliest Flier. — In Geoffrey of Moromoufch's more or leo. legendary •'Britis.'i"History," written :n: n thi early part o£ the -weHth century, K.ri| Bladud of E-.itain, whom Gejjffrey make contsrivporary with the prophet. Elija. (nmeth ceruujy, ».<?,), figures as> "cne o the earliest aviators op -record ; «n<Jeed, ; was owing to^liis zeal'ip this direction zhn Kinj Bladud met with his untimely end "This prince," says Geofiirey, "was a ver; ingenious ' o.^-n, and taught. nscro.iiancy ii h.s kingdom," rioi"' dfd he^'leave " oft pur suing his magical • operations till he at tempted to fly' to' Jhe upper regidn of' thi air witb wtog3 -vnfiob. be -bad prepared, am fell dew upon the temple of Apollo, it the «ity of • Trinovantum (London), wKe;< he w«s dashed to pieces." -Man's Earlies; v Jaw.'-^ A ja'w"wiikb"^belonged r to a' "man half t million -yea^s i wgo-w*a- 'ound, last, year in i sandpit near Heidelberg, and a oast of i has just been placed in the Natural Histor; Museum, Cromwell road, London. Thii Jawbone puts the' clock back perhaps to t-ta earliest Pleistocene, and if that is. its date then it is hard to deny that the Tace o men who had |aws like thofte existed in tlu

j earth half a million years ago. The fossil ■ was found ,70ft- below' the surface in the j j sand deposits of Mauer. There are one or ; I two- peculiarities" about the jaw which .will I ba recognisable even by the casual observer j It hes •no chin, * The teeth are hardly J graduated, but are nearly all the same sizie, i and are relatively -small in comparison, to j the size of the jaw. They represent man t apparently at a stage before he had evolved teeth which were suited to grinding -as ■well a<j biting — in other words, .before, he lived on a mixed vegetarian and animal diet Dr £ohoeten&&ck, who found the believes it belongs to the race from .whish all the others were derived. — Ocean Waves as Motive Power. — Twice a d-aj fche ocean along all its coasts rises and falls se venal , feet, and in doing so expends an amount ,6f mechanical energy that is incaloulalble. Every foot-pound of that energy, -which infinitely exceeds in amount the sum iotal of all the machinery existing in the whole, world, is (remarks' a writer in Popular Science Sittings) at man's service, arid disposition, provided only that he- can find • but a way to utilise it. If he ' could get it all fairly in his control the world would take the place of human* muscles, and it would be practically unnecessary for anybody to do any more physical worlr , than was -needful for--' his bodily healt£» Qdrfhe do it? WolJrHke best answer Is' that he is beginning to do Jt, though on a small soa-le as yet. and, as Professor Garrett P. Serviss has pointed out, one of the forms of solar energy is that represented by the tides, although in tide production the moon, plays even a greater part than the sun, simply on account of her greatei nearness to the earth. Sun and moon together lift billions of tons of sea water and pour it on our coasts, placing there -within reach an aggregation of energy greater than that of a million Niagaras, and we supinely regard it and let it go to waste for lack of a little ingenuity and a little boldness of initiative. -v — Luminous Bacteria. — Luminous bacilli or bacteria only give out light when free oxygen is m the water or liquid inhabited by them. A chemical combination of the oxygen with "substances in the bacteria is the necessary condition, of their evolution of light. When frozen these .bacteria cease to be luminous — the chemical - combination cannot take place when the substance of the bacterium is frozen solid and .maintained in that con dition ; the liquid condition is a necessary condition for these changes. These luminous bacteria have been used recently by Sir James Dewar-in the Faraday Laboratory "-of the Royal Institution (where I lately saw him at work on them), {or the purpose of investigating the action of intense cold or , living ' matter. Although their luminous response to oxygen ia arrested when they are frozen, yet immediately on allowing the temperature to rise above freezing, point the response of the jiving matter to oxydisation recommences, and a luminous glow is seen. Hence we have in this glow a ready paeans of answering the question, "Does extreme cold, of long duration, destroy the • simplest living matter?" Sir James Dewar has exposed a film of these bacteria to the' extremest degree of cold "as yet obtained »n the l&boratory— that in which hydrogen' gaa , is solidified— and he has kept them in this, I or nearly this, degree of oold for several j months Yet immediately on "thawing" the luminous glow was visible in the dark, showing that the 1 bacteria were still alive.— Sir Ray Lamkester, in the Daily Telegraph. , —Sulphate of Ammonia from Peat. — | Probably there is no question that has , I so extensively occupied the - mind of the l ' chemist and the inventor as the- cora- ! mercial exploitation of the vast deposit* > of peat abounding on the surface jpf th« . globe. The objects of their investigations i have varied from fcne production of. fuel to obtaining chemical compounds for animal foodstuffs oi othetf commodities. Success. » however,, has only been moderately achieved I j The iale&t project, and one which mci I ' dentally appears to be assured of practical . ' success, ia the manufacture of sulphate oi c i ammonia. This ehemfcai compound, whioli \ has extremely high fertilising value, ha* . been principally obtained heaet/ofore as £ , by-product in gas and coke production, ami V I the utilisation of a special process for ttw } i production of this article- martos an im portanfc development in applied science The invention has passed through the ex perimental stage, and a huge plant oa-pab!* s of tur-ning out some 5000 tons of sulphate s of ammonia per annum has been erectec f upon an Irish peat bog, the exploiters t having acquired some six square miles oi -. the raw material. The value of the in ?> ventior lies irr the fact that peat contain » ing as much as 75 par cent, of water car t be used, and that distillation is effecte-c f by moist combustion. A special type oi f furnace has been evolved, and con*bustior i is carried out by means of a blast of an a charged with water a<t a regulated tempera b ture. The resultant gases contain parafEr s tars, acetio acid, and ammonia, each ol » which is highly valuable. The am-oionia s ' gas is conducted to an acid tower, where, - j on its meeting a steam of hot sulphuric a ' acid, sulphate of ammonia is formed. Ir t ' th-s- preliminary experiments it was founc - that five tor.-s oi the fertiliser could tx V extracted irom 100 tens of paat, exclusive of the othor by-products, which in them . £°!ves are valuable. The process is re j inarkably novel, ana, b-aing oconomical, o.*ji be <i3vcloped upon. c-ommevvcMil lines w.tl: 3 comp'.eto success, a ton of the sulphate oi a r ammonia costing a'uout £6 <o produce, ' while its market value is about £12, giving t gross profit of 100 per cent. Further t ' more, owing to the romarka-bl-o fertilising 1 value of this compour.-J. th? demand is fai t in excess of the supply ; and as this cc maiKl is increasing, the po&sibiLty 3f th< product d-epreciating in its marketa>bk value is very remote.