Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1899-05-29
HOW SHOEMAKER'S WAX ACTS.
Some Curious Facts About This Prod
uct of the Bee.

One Of the most apt Illustrations
ever made by Lord Kelvin was his
likening the luminiferous either to a
mass Of shoemaker's wax. What Lord
Kelvin said of shOemaker'S wax may
be tested 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 flexible that it does not retard
the passage of planets through space
in the least. 1t is an invisible sub
stance which travels in waves through
all things. Now to illustrate the
nature of such a paradoxical material
Lord Kelvin searched everywhere,
and at last concluded that shoe
makers wax represented 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 bottom 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 a we'll 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 tumbler and poured hot
shoemaker's wax upon It. The wax
hardened with the cork at the bot
tom.
Yet when Lord Kelvin looked at the
bottom of the glass in 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
a glass of water. 1t rose no higher
than this, however, and cork
screw probably wuold not have pulled
it from the wax. Yet it's own buoy
ancy had raised it up from the bot
tom, through what seemed an i'm
penetrable mass of wax.
This, in fact, is the popularity of
shoemakers wax, that it resists all
sudden Or quick movements, but is
highly susceptible to very slow and
prolonged pressure. If you pressed
fatiron hard down on a lump of
wax on a table, it is probable you
would make no impression on it, but
if you left that iron resting on the
wax for a day or two you would find
the lump flattened out under the
iron. So curious is this property of
the wax that tuning farks have been
cast from pieces of it. These forks
were capable of vibration, giving a
musical note and being set going by
vibration from another tuning fork,
yet when one of them was laid across
the open mouth of a jar it slowly col
lapsed and fell into the jar in shape
less, sticky mass. Any boy may
perform these experiments, and the
lesson in physics to be got there
from is no less valuable than the
amusement which the performance af-
fords.-Atlantic Constitution.