The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1898-12-25
WONDERS OF SHOEMAKER'S WAX
SOME REMARKABLE RESULTS
ACHIEVED BY LORD KELVIN.
How to Make a Cork Float and a
Coin Sink In Wax-Amusement
For the Boys.

One of the most apt illustrations ever
made by Lord Kelvin was his likening
the lumeniferous ether to a mass Of
shoemakers' wax. What,-Lord Kelvin
said of shoemakers' wax may be test
ed by any boy in a manner that will
astonish his playmates. First let it be
said that the ether penetrates all space.
1t is as rigid as steel and yet so fexi-
bic that it does not retard the passage
of planets through space in the least.
1t is an invisible substance which
travels in waves through all things.
Now to illustrate the nature of such
a paradoxical material Lord Kelvin
searched everywhere, and at last con-
cluded that shoemakers' wax repre-
Sented it best. He made tests and
this is what he found:
He melted some wax in a common
glass tumbler. After it had hardened
he tried to thrust a lead pencil through
it. 1t would not go. Then he placed
a coin on the surface of the wax, and
left it for several days. When he again
visited it the coin had sunk to the bot
tom of the glass. The wax had closed
over it and by lifting up the glass and
looking through the bottom he could
see the coin lying there. Had the wax
been as deep as q well the coin would
have gone on sinking until it reached
the bottom. This proved that the
wax would conform only to very slow
movements. If he had tried to push it
too fast it would have resisted him.
An idea struck the scientist. If the
wax acted like this toward the coin,
how would it treat an object which
fioated? He accordingly placed a cork
in a tumbler and poured hot shoe
makers wax upon it. The wax hard
ened with the cork at the bottom Yet
when Lord Kelvin looked at the bot
tom of the glass in a day or two, he
found the cork had disappeared 1t
was somewhere in the mass of wax,
and probably rising very slowly, but
surely toward the top. Sure enough,
after a given period of time the cork
peeped above the surface of the hard
wax and finally it rose to a point where
it remained half imbedded in the wax,
just as it would have done in glass
of water. 1t rose no higher than this
however, and q corkscrew probably
would not have pulled it from the wax
Yet its own buoyancy had raised it ur
from the bottom, through what seem
! ed an impenetrable mass of wax.
| This, in fact, is the popularity OF
! shoemaker's wax, that it resists al
| sudden or quick movements, but i.
| highly susceptible to very slow anC
prolonged pressure. If you pressed {
! fatiron hard down on a lump OF way
on a table, it is probable you would
make no impression OF it, but if yoJ
! left that iron resting on the wax for {
day or two, you would find the lumI
hattened out under the iron. SO curl
Gus is this property of the wax tina
tuning forks have been cast from piece:
of it. These forks were capable O
vibration, giving a musical note. anc
being set going by vibration from an
other tuning fork, yet when one O
them was laid across the open moutl
of a jar, it slowly collapsed and fel
into the jar in a shapeless, sticky mass
Any boy may perform these expert
ments and the lesson in physics to b,
got therefrom is no less valuable thar
! the amusement which the performance,
affords.