SCIENCE IN WORK AND PLAY

Cue (NZERS), Issue 33, 15 October 1945, Page 17

SCIENCE IN WORK AND PLAY

Chromium plating of machine tools by a newly discovered oil bath process increases their life from three to fifty times.

Smokeless locomotives, which will mean cleaner railway stations, tunnels and sidings, may become universal as the result of new air jet installations that cause unburned gases in the firebox to ignite rather than wastefully going up, the chimney in smoke.

■-< By reversing variable pitch propellers on an aircraft their propulsive force may be directed backward making them serve as air brakes.

A new manufacturing method that will substitute sugar and water for the usual hard core of golf balls has been devised by an American company. The liquid cores are claimed to be superior to the normal type and will not solidify even at low temperatures.

A mammoth 35—ton robot calculator installed in a Harvard University basement, will solve almost any problem in applied mathematics—with results to 23 decimal places. The nerve centre of this mathematical wizard contains over 500 miles of electrical wiring and there are two million connections. It took six years to build and cost over L 50,000.