St. Paul daily globe., 1893-02-27
REDUCES AIR TO LIQUID.
Wonderful Results of the Expert
ynnDts of prof Daxvar

w OnQerfui Results OF the Expert
ments of Prof Dewar.
LONDON, Feb. 26.-The world of
natural science is rejoicing this week
over fuller knowledge of one of the
greatest discoveries of the century. An
audience of England's greatest men
spent Tuesday evening watching eX-
periments which resulted in the pro-
duction of a series of liquids strange to
human eyes. and. possessing q uaities
never before known. They saw natural
gases, such as oxygen and nitrogen
even the air itself, reduced to liquids of
the consistency of water Liquid air
by the pint was produced from
the wonderful apparatus OF Prof.
suddenly won him prominent
place in the scientific world. His meth
ods are even more interesting to the
unScientific observer than his results.
He has succeeded in producing by
means of vacuum and pressure an al
most inconceivable degree of cold.
Measured by Fahrenheit's thermometer
it is $50 degrees below freezing or 210
eentigrade below zero. Oxygen can be
liquefed at minus 1872 degrees centigrade
and nitrogen at minus 1872. When he
produced these temperatures Prof. De-
war found in experimenting with air
that. instead of oxygen in the atmos-
phere relinqulshing first at its proper
temperature and nitrogen later, one
homogeneous liquid was formed without
any disintegratiOn.
When the process is reversed, how
ever, the nitrogen is freed first and
the oxygen afterward. The effects OF
hn inf, Il I
oxygen has strange magnetic and light
absorbing qualities 1t is so tranSpar-
ent that. Notwithstanding its intense
cold, it acts as a lens. You can focus
heat through it from one side and burn
paper on the other. That, says Prof.
Dewar, is what happens with the suns
rays on the earth, which are focused
through infinite space. The vacuums
produced by Prof. Dewar's apparatus
are so nearly perfect that they contain
gas only to the -millionth density
of common air. The temperature Of
infinite space, which is a perfect vacu-
um, the professor says, is minus 274
centigrade. He hopes to reach tenn
perature Of minus 240, when hydrogen
will liquify.
Prot. .Dewar yesterday produced lique-
fed ozone by.acting on the vapor given
OH tr0m liquid oxygen by electricity. IL
is of a splendid dark blue color, almost
as dark as indigo. Ozone has not the
same molecule as oxygen, land electricity
breaks up three twos into three threes.
That is the secret of it. The queer
thing about liquid ozone is that when it
goes back into gas again it eXplOdes. 1t
is stronger than dynamite as an eXplo-
,sive. 1t is simply because ozone goes
back into the molecular form Of oxygen
SO fast. Some wonderful effects of in
tense cold have already been found.
Iron, for instance, at ordinary tempera-
ture has only one-seventh the electric
conducting power of copper, but if the
temperature is reduced to minus 200 it's
capacity as conductor Of electricity is
multiplied by fourteen.
''1f we could get the metals down to
absolute zero" Prof. D9war said TO an
interviewer yesterday, ''they would be
perfect conductors. No expenditure of
energy would be necessary, and wire
once charged would run on forever"
The professor believes that one of the
greatest problems of the world. namely,
whether the coheSiveneSS Of matter is
dependent upon molecular motion OF
upon gravity, will in time be solved by
means of investigations conducted in
intense artificial cold.