BILLY BOYS’ WORKSHOP

Taranaki Daily News, 31 March 1934, Page 21 (Supplement)

BILLY BOYS’ WORKSHOP

A CORNER HANGING WARDROBE. This week I am giving instructions for making a hanging wardrobe which can be fitted in any comer for a landing or bedroom. The diagram A shows the simple framework, made of pieces of wood half an inch thick, two pieces two and a half inches wide, and one piece three inches wide. Saw these pieces to the lengths indicated in the diagram. Glue and nail the two narrow parts together so that they form a right angle to fit the corner of the wall, and saw the front edges at an angle so that the remaining board fits flush as shown at B. Glue this, board in place and fix it by screws driven in from

the back of the other parts near the front edges. See that the screws do not go right through the front board. To strengthen the framework, cut a piece of wood fourteen inches long, and, after sawing one end to a point, glue and nail it across, as shown in diagram A. , ' , To provide an ornamental finish to the front, obtain a piece of moulding about two and a half inches wide and two feet four inches long. Glue and nail this to the front board, as shown in the diagrams, so that the top projects about half an inch above. Two or three hooks can now be screwed to each side board, and an .extending wardrobe rail can be fixed underneath the cross-piece. To support the curtains, fix a small screw eye inside ithe front board at either end near the bottom corner, and stretch a flexible rod across as shown in diagram D. To cover in the framework, cut a triangular-shaped piece of plywood, to fit, and lightly nail it to the top of the side pieces. . The projecting part of the ornamental moulding will hide the front edge as shown at C. Give the work two coats of varnish-stain, or paint, to match tne other furniture. To support the frame on the wan, screw two eye-plates on each side piece. If the wall has a picture rail, the fitment can conveniently rest on that. The Hut Carpenter, CITADEL OF THE ATOM. SIX KINDS OF MATTER. All over the world scientific men are striving to prise open the atom. _ In the autumn Lord Rutherford is to preside over a conference of the General Staff of Science which is to consider pacific but strong measures to take it apart. The integrity of the atom must always be respected, but till it has been blown more thoroughly to bits science is rather in the dark about it. The days are past when the atom can be considered in the light of Sir Oliver Lodge’s illustration, as a sort of dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral in which electrons like motes in the sunbeam are endlessly dancing about. The electrons are certainly there whirling about some central larger and heavier speck at speeds of thousands of miles a second, but there is something else as well. HEAVY HYDROGEN. When the first simple picture was abandoned, new names were found for the parts of the atom. The central speck was declared to be a nucleus of hydrogen, and was called an electron proton. The others were particles of helium, named alpha particles. All matter was held till two years ago to boil down in tire atom to these two gases. Then two new particles were added to the list, the neutron (which was an alliance of positive and electric particles) and the positive (as distinguished from the negative) electron. That made, with the negative electron, five things in an atom of matter. Then a few weeks ago, another unit ■ was found. Hydrogen, the simplest of all kinds of matter, was found to be not so simple as supposed. There is a second kind of hydrogen, called heavy hydrogen, which has a nucleus twice as massive as the simple hydrogen nucleus with which science began its theorising. So now the dipion, as Lord Rutherford calls it, makes a sixth kind of matter for the building-up of atoms. MILLIONS OF VOLTS. But Lord Rutherford and his General Staff, drawn from America, Japan, India, and the European countries as well as the British Empire, are not content to let the matter rest there, or to let -these invisible particles eat the bread of idleness. . They set them to work. By eesembling great powers of electricity, amounting to millions of volts, they release the heavier particles and fire them off at the mass of the atoms. These particles are immensely hard, they fly at immense speeds, and they. can shock any atom out of its impenetrability, if they register on it a direct hit. Such projectiles, if they were as big as a football, and were fired at the same speed, would blow a hole clear through the globe. They are, of course, almost immeasurably small, but, small as they are, if and when they rend the atom apart they will disclose more and more of its secrets.