The Calhoun chronicle. [volume] (Grantsville, W. Va.) 1883-1984, 1901-08-06
POPULAR SCIENCE.

POPULAR SCIENCE.
Experiments upon materials at low
temperature, which have been made
possible by the advent of liquid air,
develop some unexpected results. A
ball of india rubber cooled to the tenn
perature of the air becomes brittle. and
IL dropped on the floor flies into pieces.
while a ball Of lead will rebound, hav-
ing acquired a remarkable increase of
elasticity Lead also makes a very
respectable spiral spring at a tempera-
ture OF 200 or 300 degrees below zero.
During the nineteenth century 235
new comets were discovered. as
against sixty-two in the eighteenth
century. The nineteenth century also
beheld great number of large AMI
brilliant comets than did its pre-.
decessor. The finest of these were the
comets of 1911, 1913, 1853. 1881 and
1882. In the year 1900 only one
periodical comet was known Halley's;
now many are knOwp, of which mt
least seventeen have been seen at
more than one return to perihelion.
A new idea for utilizing the power
of the wind in order to produce cleo
tricity has just been successfully tried.
Windmills are too uncertain TO permit
of their being used for driving dyna-
mos, so it is proposed that windmills
be used TO pump water into n high
reservoir or tank. and this would drive
a dynamo in an ordinary way by
means of a turbine. Although the
windmill might work ftfully, it would
be sufficient to keep up constant sup
ply of water so that the production
Of electricity would be continuous
DR.. A. A. Common, the English as
tronomer, in illustrating recently
what the telescope and the microscope
have done in extending the powers
of vision, employed the following fig
ures: Imagine the size of an eye, and
therefore of man capable of seeing
in n natural way what the ordinary
eye sees with the aid of n large tele-
scope, and also the size of a man who
could plainly see with his natural eye
what we see with n powerful micro
scope. The first man would be a giant
several miles tall, and the second
midget very small fraction CT i
inch in height.
Some Of the astronomical photo
graphs made at the Harvard observa-
tory reveal the fact that in April, 1899,
new staT appeared in the constella-
ton Aquila. At first its spectrum re-
sembled the spectra of other new stars
but in October a photograph showed
that the character Of the light had
changed, and now its spectrum was
that of a gaseous nebula. Last sum-
mer q telescope observation of this
curious object was made by Professor
Wendell at Cambridge, and he con-
firmed tine evidence of the photograph
showing that it had become nebula.
Such occurrences are rare, and one ex-
PLANTATION OF them is that they are the
result of collisions in space, the heat
developed being sufficient to turn solid
matter into gas and vapor.
The science of clouds has attracted
many devotees within the past few
years, and photography has greatly as
sisted in advancing II. Clouds. like
stars, become far more interesting to
the non-scientific observer of nature
when he knows the names attached to
them. While the grandest and most
imposing form of cloud is the domed
and pinnacled cumulus which frequent
ly accompanies thunderstormS. the
most beautiful is the feathery cirrus.
Cirrur clouds sometimes exist at
enormous elevations While their
mean height is about 10000 feet-the
height of Mount Everest-they have
been measured at an elevation of 40.
600 feet, or more than nine miles. They
move with great velocity, about nine
ty miles an hour on the average and
in winter sometimes more than 200
miles an hour.