Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1908-02-25
AjDO[py[lAlD g
Y@SGWg[E L1C[BP

With view to encouraging officials
and workmen on the Imperial German
Railways, the government has estab
llshed fund from which awards are
made to men who invent any appliance
which may be useful in railway prac
tice; $3.50 was paid to employees last
year from the fund.
When traveller In the grand duchy
of Baden wants to send telegram
while he Is on the train, he writes the
message on a post card, with the re
quest that 1t be wired, puts on a stamp
and drops it into the train letter box
At the next station the box is cleared
and the message sent.
Bacteria are short-lived upon metal
coins, the metal having a certain anti
septic effect. The action of gold Is less
marked In this respect than other met
ais The bacillus typhosus will live
from FIVE to seven days upon a gold
piece, but dies in less than eighteen
hours upon other metals.
1t is now demonstrated, according
to the Engineer, that the reason copper
and iron will not alloy is on account
of the carbon that the iron absorbs
In melting. If the iron and copper be
melted together in clay crucible, sc
that no carbon can be taken up, the re
sulting alloy is perfectly homogeneous
and free from any separated nodules.
1t has long been recognized that va
rious forms of dust, when mingled with
air in certain proportions, are capable
of producing destructive explosion;
when brought into contact with flame
This danger sometimes exists in foul
mills. A historic instance is the ex
plosion of three -four mills at Mime
apolis in 1878. 1t was then demon
strated, by experiment, that two ounces
of -four in two cubic feet of confined
air. when ignited, would cause a vic
lent explosion, and it was calculated
that the contents of -four sack dis
tributed through 1900 cubic feet OF
Of throwing a weight of $500 tons to a
height Of 100 feet. Recently S. f. Peck
ham has shown that any dust that will
burn may cause an explosion. An in
stance Is known where sugar dust In a
confectionery factory caused an explo-
sion, and in another case dry soap dust
proved equally dangerous.
How hot is the suns surface? This
long-disputed question receives a new
answer from Prof j. NJ. Schfeberle OF
the Ann Arbor Observatory. Formerly
the effective surface temperature OF
the sun was estimated at millions OF
degrees. Then came revulsion from
these extreme estimates, and lately the
tendency has been to place the solar
tmperature as low as 5000 degrees Cen
tigrade. Prof ScheberIe returns to
higher estimates. According to his
calculations, assuming the correctness
of Prof. Poynting's value for the abso-
lutte temperature of the small black
particle" which serves as the basis of
calculation, the suns temperature
would be 100000 degrees. But he
adopts another value for the black
particle, from which he deduces a TEN.
perature of 10000 degrees Prof
Sch@berle uses for his researches a
specially constructed rejecting tele-
scope Of two feet aperture and three
feet focus, which he describes as by
far the most powerful telescope for
this kind of work ever constructed"
He promises additional facts and cal
culatlons. In the meantime 1t seems
best to say that we do not know how
hot the sun Is.