Science S iftings

New Zealand Tablet, 17 March 1910, Page 435

Science S iftings

BY * volt*

Interesting Analysis of Snow*. The London • Lancet once made an analysis of London snow on a week-day and on a Sunday. The Sunday snow showed roughly a fifth of the amount of impurities present in the week-day snow. But the most significant difference was that while the week-day snow contained as much as 3.36 grains of sulphuric acid in 101 b, the Sunday snow contained practically none. J Straw Used for Matches. The straw of various grasses and cereals has been tried and found suitable for wood in making matches. The straw is cut into two-inch lengths by machinery, winnowed to obtain uniform size, and then boiled in paraffin. dried and dipped into the mixture of chlorate of potash etc.,, for the inflammable tip. The process should, if adopted on a large scale, obviate the use of wood and also give an improved match, with the advantages of a wax vesta, at a very small cost. Wonderful Clocks. ™ Q Five wheels and a small battery virtually constitute the mechanism of a wonderful clock just invented. It will [. U hr u e / ear s. Without attention, and at the end of that r„ 0 ,, ail that ,is required is to attach a new ' battery. Another new clock enables the possessor to ascertain at a glance the mean time, the meridian and relative position +L w y Part °a th j m P lre > besides being able to witness the actual speed and direction of the earth’s rotation The money power is a clock in the base of the stand, and the apparatus requires winding only once a week. Shadowgraphs. Tdmr^ baC0 i VS + ap xf consist , of the accompaniment of a phonograph j 0! the proverbial shadow pictures cast on a sheet suspended between two rooms. Care must be taken m fl v r £« ng i mg th f llg j lts 80 that the shadows of the actors i ear *cut a nd not out of proportion to the size of Vr Jh J°+ Whicl j they ar , e thrown. The concealed phonograph starts, and presto! the shadow actors behind the sheet seem to be the very embodiments of the voices 1 of the recor* /is difficult to realise that a machine is talking. • Especially is this true when the impersonators are sufficiently familiar with the words as to be able ; to form them with their lips, although not really uttering them Absurd interpretations are sometimes indulged in, as when* for instance, Juliet a tremendous creature, elopes with is .i muh mferior in size, by walking P ff with um tucked under her arm. Often characteristics of well realism SlngerS ° r orators are impersonated with striking A Peculiar Fish. f , Queensland can, on the whole, supply us with a bountiful allowance of Lenten foods (writes the Brisbane correspondent of the Catholic Press). We have only to think Related + n CU + bi lt Baramundi, which abound in our rivers Slled bv t +b« h lL Baramundi a a , freak in natural history fil d v the learned ‘ ceretodus.’ The peculiarity of this fish which, by the way, is a true Queenslander, faithful to his native waters, consists of burying himself in the mud when the waters of our rivers dry up, as happens very f Queensland. , Thus hidden in the damp earth he is able to live for a very long period, until the river flows again. The reason of this peculiarity in the ceretodus is accounted for by his having, besides gills, the rudiments of lungs, which enable him to breath e. When the bridges for the Central line going to Longreach were in course of construction this peculiar fish was often found - wrapping! 6 * 1 bedS ° f the rivers rolled up safely in his mudRaindrops. Raindrops do not always have the same size or weight, and • this is primarily due to the fact that they are not formed in kthe f dro ? + S if Water , that fa] l from a wet cloth or the spout of a pitcher, or the drops that rush out of the small : holes in a garden sprinkler. - In all these latter cases a : solid stream of water is broken up into drops; but the rn/nuWtlfm^ef 1^ + in J he cloud by the accumulation of minute atoms of water drawn together into one drop, and iTtTffi icrimTl^nl ol6^ g of a i larg ? snowflake or a solid y + kadston , e - „ When a drop is thus formed in the BmoP 8 ’ beg i ns to fa ll, no matter whether it be large or ’ and + ? serers m .balloons state that all sizes of ’ P fi f to be jounci within the clouds themselves, from the finest fog and drizzling mist up to the heavy rain. It ZlZ m ° nly Saidthat b e bigger drops fall faster than the ' smaller ones and overtake them and grow bigger. This sounds reasonable, but no one has really proved it.