The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-04-02
SCRAPS OLE SCIENCE.

Twenty millions of meteors are SAID 10
fall llpon the earth every day, thelr az
gregare weight amounting 10 severn 5I6 iUs
A little petroleum barometer, l50 times
as sensitive as the ordinary mercury par
ometer. has been exhibited to the Berlin
physical society.
railway. with a total length of 800 miles,
have been built in different parts OF the
world. They are worked by 3OS iocomo-
tives, the heaviest weighing seventy tons.
A new and wonderful substitute Tor
common brittle glass is announced by
Vienna journal devoted to the glass ana
porcelain trade The substitute is SAID
to have all the properties of common
glass, except that it is flexible 1t Is
made of cullodian wool.
The theory that electricity, magnetism
and chemical action are modes OF mo
tion, either of the molecules or the ether,
He claims that this view, which he pub
lished three years ago, IS confirmed by
the Roentgen experiments.
OF the fourteen new stars discovered
within the past 300 years, four were dis
covered by Mrs. Fleming of the Harvard
observatory-nam one in the constel-
lation of Perseus in 1887; one in Norma in
1898, and one each in Carina and Centau-
rus during the present year.
II is pointed out that a new and i'm
mense field for scientific investigation
has been opened by the great Trans-Sl-
berian railway. Next summer the eX-
the Yenesei at a distance OF 1851 miles
from St. Petersburg, and will have IA
cilities for navigating the great rivers
running northward.
An electric lamp that can be carried in
the pocket has been produced in Germany
by Herr Bohwinkel. 1t is made either in
cylindrical form or like a fiat flask, a
small glow lamp in each case forming the
upper portion while the battery is the
base A so-called revolver battery" of
three platinum-zinc elements gives a cur
rent of four to five ampereS at six volts
NJ. Piltschikoff, in describing recent pho
tographs of lightning, names three types
of fiaSh-band lightning. tube lightning
and water spout lightning. The first two
he found TO occur in all storms, the third
he met with once only. From the meas
ured width of the band lightning on pho
tographs, and the computed distance, he
estimates the actual widths to be from
about fifteen to eighty yards.
An investigation by DR.. Losner indi-
Gates that typhoid bacilli may survive in
a buried corpse for ninety-six days, choi-
eight days, tubercle bacilli from ninety
five to 12S days, tetanus bacini more than
2Ss days, but not over 361 days, and an
thrax germs found their way TO adjacent
filter that ordinary burial seems to offer
little more risk of spreading disease than
cremation.
Ozone is becoming an important indus
trial agent. 1t artihcially ages liquor, re-
moves the effect OF oily beans in coffee
and improves tobacco. In its late appli-
cation to the rapid seasoning of wood for
sounding boards and musical instruments
it increases the resistance of the wood
to temperature and moisture and adds to
its acoustic qualities. 1t thickens lin
seed oil for linoleum in few days, where
as the old method of oxidation often took
several months. 1t bleaches linen in less
than third of the time required by sun
light. 1t is also valuable in chemical and
technical processes, especially in puri-
flying starch derivatives from undesira-
BILE color, odor and taste.
The Gregorian calendar. first substl-
tuted for the Julian calendar in 1882 al
lows the ordinary year $50 days the leap
year 1866 days. and drops three leap years
in every four centuries, only those cen
tennial years which are Invisible by 400
being leap years. The mean year of our
time-reckoning by this system, while suf-
ficiently accurate to satisfy most indi-
viduals. is still twenty-six seconds longer
than the true astronomical year This
has led a learned member of the French
academy of sciences to propose a further
correction of the calendar by considering
every year Invisible by 5000 as an ordi-
nary instead of a leap year, thus reduc-
ing the error in our mean year TO one
day in $4,000 years. If the change is
adopted the first departure from the
Gregorian rule will not occur for more
than 100 years