The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1899-04-08
ICE MADE OVER A FIRE.

glass.
ICE MADE OVER A FIRE
The experiment of making ice over a
fire was perhaps the most strikingly il
Illustrative of the power of liquid air.
Mr.. Tripler took a kettle, filled it with
the liquid, and it began to boil. He
placed it on a gas stove SO that the
flame could play on the bottom of the
vessel. The heat but intensified the
cold, as it accelerated the liquid in
turning into gas. Ice water poured in
to this kettle still further increased the
process, for it was comparatively hot
water. The kettle boiled and sent a
stream of steam aloft to a distance of
six or eight feet. No housekeeper has
ever seen her kettle boil so. All this
time the water was being frozen within
the kettle and beneath it in the flame
was a covering of frost. 1t was no ord
mary ice, either, for later, on being
passed around, the intensity of it's
freezing kept it firm "a long time, in
spite of the heat of the room.
A beefSteak was produced and low
cred in a pan of the liquid. 1t was
soon brought up and when struck with
a hammer flew into hundred pieces.
Its appearance when cracked up was
similar to petrified wood. 1t was in
tensely cold to the touch, and it re-
quired some time before the heat of the
room had returned the meat to it's nat
ural state.
The concluding test was in some re-
spects a most wonderful one. Mr..
Tripler placed liquid air in a deep tin
cup, lowered it in a jar of water and
soon had a thick coating of ice on it.
The liquid air turned into gas. He put
ice water in the cup to relieve the hold
Of the ice on the tin cup, and when re-
moved he had a cup of ice. This ice
cup in turn he filled with liquid air
and then lowered a piece of carbon in
it. A bright light was the result
showing the ice glass as an arc light
through a. globe The carbon was
burning with a heat of 5000 degrees
above zero, and it was burning i'm
mersed in liquid with temperature of
$40 degrees below zero, yet the eXper-
imenter held the cup in one hand and
the end of the carbon in the other. the
intense cold preventing danger from
heat SO great as to be beyond the pow
Ell of the mind to comprehend it.
ALCOHOL IN ICICLES.
Frozen alcohol was another inter
esting object placed before the COM
pany. An icicle of alcohol would soon
turn to a lumpy mass, resembling soft
taffy but dipped in the liquid air for
but an instant it was again as an icicle.
The liquid air, thrown into a large
jar of water, gave strange appearance.
The liquid would sink, almost or quite
touch the1bottom, of the jar, and then.
is it struggled to- resume its gaseous
state, would again come to the top.
At the conclusion of the exhibition
Mr.. Tripler said he had heard that a
statement of his to the effect that he
could make ten gallons of liquid from
three gallons of air had been ques-
toned by some of those who had read
an account of his work in the March
number of McClure's Magazine He re-
peated this statement and said it
could be proved.
He spoke of liquid air as the great
power of the future, and said if it
could be made to run a small engine.
as he had shown to be possible. it
could be made TO run a large one The
wasteful manner of getting power from
coal. which is merely the stored UP
power of the sun, would have substitute
ed for it a cheap and easy method of
securing it through liquid air. He had
had trouble in his method Of operating
an engine, caused by the freezing of
the liquid while in use, but he was still
experimenting. and research in the line
of investigation he was following was
| in it's infancy The audience only had
a glimpse of what might be done with
liquid air.