North Iowa times. [volume] (McGregor, Iowa) 1867-current, 1870-06-01
A Few Facts in figures.

A ACW WIZ IA6WAVce
It may not be unintcrcsting to some
of your readers to recall portion Of their
old school studies which we are all so
apt to forget in the after-days of business
life and in doing SO, it may even be
possible that more than one may have q
useful and instructive fact thrown in his
or her way.
propose, therefore, to deal now, with
few facts in figures respecting the earth
that we inhabit, and the greater and lesser
luminaries with which it is so intimately
connected.
The Hebrew poet-for he was poet Of
the highest order, though few men seem
to know it-tells US that God thought
"Light! and light was; and we may ap-
propriately supplement this with Millions
description Of the creation Of the heavenly
bodies.
"God saw,
Surveying his great work, that it was good,
''For Of celestial bodies, first the sun,
"A mighty sphere he framed, unlightsome first.
s0lobose, and every magnitude of stars,
"And sowed with stars the heavens thick As q field.
"Of light by far the greater part he took,
''Transplanted from her cloudy shrine, and placed
"In the suns orb, made porous to receive
sand drink the liquid light, firm to retain
.Her gathered beams, great palace now of light
"IIither, as to their fountains, other stars
Repairing, in their golden urns draw light"
In judging Of magnitudes and distances,
men employ some definite and known
quantities in order to convey just con-
ception Of the size or dimensions of the
object they wish to describe but it is q pain
fact that the greater the object the greater
the given quantity or measure required
to describe it 1; thus if say the height Of
sapling is 80 inches, my meaning is
definite and clear but if l say that the
distance to Monona from McGregor is
seven hundred and sixty thousand inches
convey no definite idea at all of the dis
lance, because the mind cannot grasp such
multiplicity of the unit Of measurment.
And so in dealing with the immense
magnitudes and distances of the heavenly
bodies, the unit Of measurement, the mile,
fails entirely to convey any correct idea Of
the vastness attempted to be portrayed,
and we are compelled to fall back on some
other media in order to clearly impart
what we desire.
Nov the sun, the great luminary cen.
tire Of our planetary system, about whose
constitution 80 many and various theories
have been advanced, appears to Us to be
vast ball of FIRE, or incandescent (red
hot) matter. By very simple but very
beautiful means, which, however, it would
be impossible in letter like this to ex-
plain clearly to all my readers, this great
object has been measured. and found to
be of the diameter of 882 thousand miles.
In order to realize this immense immensi-
ty, let us make one voyage all round the
world, via the new Pacific railroad and
Sues canal, which will take somewhat
over four months of constant travel; now
repeat this ITO times more, or, in short,
keep travelling at this rate for thirty seven
years without stopping, and you would
get once round the sun-so much for its
size. Now this enormous red hot DO dy
fortunately for as is at q mean distance
of IS millions and l73 thousand miles.
This distance is written in Arabic numer-
ais with eight figures, very simple and
very short but what mind save His who
hung the planets in their orbits can really
grasp it? Let " try and get some faint
conception of it.
Light, which travels the swiftest of all
things known, leaping through space at
the rate of one hundred and ninety-eight
thousand miles per second, takes seven
and half minutes to reach us from the
sun. Sound travels at the rate of ll2O
feet per second: could it be possible to
transmit sound such distance, it would
take thirteen and half years ere it
crossed the vast expanse. But these, al
though very interesting facts, scarcely give
us any appreciable idea of the distance !;
let US try something more familiar to us.
A cannon ball will travel at the rate of
400 yards per second, somewhat faster
than sound, and would take l34 years in
its transit. A railroad train going at q
speed Of 40 miles per hour, and travelling
night and day, without stopping Tor wood
or water, or switching off for meals at way
stations, would wear out the lives of four
conductors and engineers, even though
they should live to the allotted term of
three score and ten years, for it would
take I'll years ere it spanned the enor-
nous distance.
This is vast, but we have something
still more SO. Let us now imagine an
enormous pair of compasses, place one
foot of it in the sun and spread out the
other IS millions and o few odd thousand
miles to be correct, and stick it into the
earth, now describe circle, and you have
q fair representation of the earth's orbit;
say q fai representation because the
earth's orbit round the sun is not an ex-
act circle, but elliptical, being q small
matter of three millions and two hundred
thousand miles nearer the sun at one
point than the ether, which is opposite,
and strange as it may appear, and yet not
strange after all, it is during the winter
that we are nearest this immense burning
sun but we will leave the explanation of
this for another time.
Now this orbit, which is in length about