SCIENCE SIFTINGS

New Zealand Tablet, 8 January 1920, Page 46

SCIENCE SIFTINGS

(By “Volt.”)

Natural Soap. It is said that in a mountain near Elko, Nevada, there is an inexhaustible supply of pure soap. .1 One may enter the mine with a butcher’s knife and cut as large a piece as he ,wants. It is beautifully mottled, and on being exposed to the air hardens somewhat. The mountain of clay is of fine texture, and it contains boracic acid, soda, and borate of . lime. Its color is given it by the iron and other minerals. In its natural state it is rather strong in alkali, and removes ink and other stains readily. At one time it was'used on the Pullman cars, but when its peculiar origin became generally known passengers appropriated it so extensively for souvenirs that the company was forced to go back to the common soap of commerce. Round the World in a Day. A statement was made recently to the effect that in the near future there will bo aeroplanes capable of travelling 800 miles an hour, a possibility that makes the idea of crossing the Atlantic seem almost insignificant. And if this prophecy is fulfilled we may look forward to a race among airmen to be first to circle the earth in a day. To fly round the globe in a day over the latitude of London would require a speed of less than 700 miles an hour, while over the equator the speed would have to be about 1050 miles per hour. An interesting point in such a one-day world-circling flight would be that if the airman flew from east to west and started at noon, he would travel in daylight with the sun at the meridian from start to finish. Messengers of Death. The hand-grenade is by no means a modern invention; in fact, the French used it as early as 1594, naming it after the pomegranate because of its resemblance to the fruit. After a long period of disuse it made a reappearance during the siege of Port Arthur. Since then there have been many developments, and the grenade as used today is a very complicated and delicate mechanism. The Americans have paid particular attention to it —their Patents Office has considered no fewer than 300 designs. At the beginning of the great war the Russians used crudelymade grenades that cost little over a shilling apiece. But the casualty lists of the users being nearly equal to the enemy’s, it was not a popular weapon, and was soon dropped. The grenade used by the British is known as the Mills pattern. It is operated by a timing device set for five seconds. After being thrown it works in this way; A lever is automatically ejected, letting go the strikingpin, which releases and fires the cap igniting the fuse. This burns for five seconds and ignites the detonator, which explodes the charge of powdered ammonal. The fragments of the grenade, numbering about 60, scatter in all directions, and arc effective within a radius of 100 ft. The shell of the grenade is of cast iron, and is lacquered on the outside with a solution of gum shellac and methylated spirit to prevent rust. Tho Origin of the Names of Fabrics. The origin of the names of popular fabrics is even more interesting than the tracing to third lingual roots of ordinary words. About the year 1329 the woollen trade of England became located at Worsted, about 15 miles from Norwich, and it was at this place that the manufacture of the twisted double thread of woollen, afterwards called worsted, was first made, if not invented. Linsey-wolsey was first made at Linsey, and was for a long time a very popular fabric. Kerseymere takes its name from the village of Kersey, and the mere close by it, in the country of Suffolk. We have to thank Gaza, in Palestine, the gates of which Samson carried away, for gaze or gauze. Gaza means “treasure.” Voltaire, wishing to describe some intellectual but dressy woman, said, “She is an eagle in a cage of gauze.” Muslin owes its name to Mossoul, a fortified town in Turkey in Asia. Tulle obtains its name from that of a city in the south of France. Travellers by rail in Brittany often glide past Guingamp without remembering that it ’ was here that was first produced that useful fabric, gingham. Damask derives its name from the city of Damascus; calico from Calicut, a town .in India formerly celebrated for its cotton cloth, where also calico was printed; cambric from Cambray, a town in Flanders, where it was first made; and tweed from a fabric worn by fishermen upon the River Tweed.