Fort Pierce news. (Fort Pierce, Fla.) 190?-1920, 1908-03-06
THE SQUARE ROOT OF 2
No One Has Yet Succeeded In
Extracting It Accurately.
SOME IMPOSSIBLE PROBLEMS


Felix, a small village in the depart
ment of Haute Garonne, in France #
wealthy octogenarian hortjcul'rHst
who spent the last forty-fye years Of
his life and a sum yarlously estimated
at from $4,000 TO G15OOO in attempt.
ing TO produce by artificial cultivation
a blue rose
He failed and for the hest of reasons
the task is one impossible Of accom-
plishment AS De Candolle, a great au.
thority on this subject has pointed out
yellow and blue are the fundamental
types Of color IN flowers, and these col.
Ors are antagOnistic, mutually eXclud-
ing each other Yellow by culture may
be changed into red or white. but new.
er into blue. On the other hand blue
will pass into red but never into vel
low, We have a yellow rose; hence
there is no blue
The pursuit of the absolute zero pCm,
is to chemists what the discovery Of
the north pole is to geOGraphcrs Ever
since Fahrenheit in 1921 preached the
problem scientists tnnumeruble have
ftriyen to reach the goal in vain, al.
though each, In turn, has succeeded in
understanding the other.
Thus Fahrenheit boosted that no one
could ever attain artifcially to
greater degree Of cold than he produced
with salt and ice--seven degrees below
zero--although, Of course, he did hot
suppose that cold ended there Set.
within few years Of bis death. over
100 degrees below had been obtained,
md Professor James DcwaT, whose re-
searches in the field oil low tempera.
lures have brought out so many new
and startling facts succeeded by cool.
ing down The rare gas heluln by the
aid Of liquefed hydrogen In registering
the almost inconceivable temperature
Of 422 degrees below zero +. BUT this
is not absolute zero, and the problem
remains unsolyed
Here and there Ia odd corners of the
earth. gray. bent men still pore over
crucibles seeking the philosophers
Stone-that mysterious and wonderful
substance which will, they believe,
when found change the baser metals
into gold. 1t never will be found, Of
course, for such q substance. in the
nature of things, can have no concrete
existence. Nevertheless for hundreds
OF years the best brains and keeneSt
intelects in Chnstendom sought it !
early and late.
Nor were their !abors wholly wasted. !
for it was while searching for this /
mythical treasure that Bottchcr stun. /
bled on the secret Of the manufacture
OF porcelain; Roger Bacon on that Of /
the composition Of Gunpowder: Gaher
on the properties Of acids; Van Hell
mont on the nature Of gas, and Or.
on the "salts" which bear his
name. After q similar fashion, too.
the three century long hunt for the
elixir of life beQueathed 10 us a whole
host of valuable remedial drugs and |
was the means Indirectly Of saving or,
ut all events, prolonging literally mil.
lions of lives.
So also. as the result OF the vain
search after perpetual motion, there
was evolved the greatest Of ali the gon.
civilizations Of modern physical sci.
ence, the principle of the conservation
Of energy, ana even now more or less
Important discoveries are being con.
'tanty stumbled on by seekers after
be same perennial will-o'-the. wisp
For let 1t be by no means imagined
hat the perpetual motion cranks are
III dead and gone, On the contrary,
hey are probably fully as numerous
nd as sanguine today as they We're in
he time of Lebnitz or Newton {
OF course the thing is impossible aud
las been proved so over aud over {
gain, but that does not deter them.
)nly the other day a man turned I'd
t the office Of well known patent
gent with a model Of perpetual mo-
Ion machine which depended for Its t
roper working upon tue interrogation /
f gravitatIonal attraction +
The principle Of the invention, the
lyentor was good enough to explain, c
us simplicity itself The only thing p
lat remained to be done, be ingenu-
lsly remarked, was to find the proper p
aterisl for an interceptor. Is 1t pos t;
lie to conceive Of human folly going
l.ther than this? n
Among mathematicians the two most
NOUS unsolvable problems are the y
isectlon of the angle and the dupli
tion Of the cube. Men have toiled rt
one or the other. sometimes at both,
these for fifteen, twenty, thirty
ass. only TO retire at last bafied and p,
aten Their calculations and meth.