Part 4

Hold a red rose over the blue flame of a common match and the color will be discharged wherever the fume touches the leaves of the flower, so as to render it beautifully variegated, or entirely white. If it be then dipped into water, the redness, after a time, will be restored.

Marking Indelibly.

Write upon linen with permanent ink (which is a strong solution of nitrate of silver), and the characters will be scarcely visible; remove the linen to a dark room, and they will not change; but expose them to a strong light, and they will be of an indelible black.

Visible Growth.

Cut a circular piece of card to fit the top of a hyacinth glass, so as to rest upon the ledge, and exclude the air. Pierce a hole through the center of the card, and pass through it a strong thread, having a small piece of wood tied to one end, which, resting transversely on the card, prevents it being drawn through. To the other end of the thread attach an acorn; and having half filled the glass with water, suspend the acorn at a short distance from the surface.

The glass must be kept in a warm room, and in a few days the steam will hang from the acorn in a drop, the skin will burst, and the root will protrude and thrust itself in the water, and in a few days more a stem will shoot out at the other end, and rising upwards, will press against the card, in which an orifice must be made to allow it to pass through. From this stem small leaves will soon be observed to sprout; and in the course of a few weeks you will have a handsome oak plant, several inches in height.

Colored Flames.

A variety of rays of light are exhibited by colored flames, which are not to be seen in white light. Thus pure hydrogen gas will burn with a blue flame, in which many of the rays of light are wanting.

The flame of an oil lamp contains most of the rays which are wanting in the sunlight. Alcohol mixed with water, when heated or burned, affords a flame with no other rays but yellow. The following salts, if finely powdered, and introduced into the exterior flame of a candle, or into the wick of a spirit lamp, will communicate to the flame their peculiar colors:

Chloride of Soda (common salt) Yellow. “ of Potash Pale violet. “ of Lime Brick red. “ of Strontia Bright crimson. “ of Lithia Red. “ of Baryta Apple green. “ of Copper Bluish green. Borax Yellow.

Or either of the above salts may be mixed with spirit of wine, as directed, for Red Fire.

ORANGE COLORED FLAME.

Burn spirit of wine on chloride of calcium, a substance obtained by evaporating muriate of lime to dryness.

EMERALD GREEN FLAME.

Burn spirit of wine on a little powdered nitrate of silver.

INSTANTANEOUS FLAME.

Heat together potassium and sulphur, and they will instantly burn very vividly.

Heat a little nitre on a fire-shovel, sprinkle on it flour of sulphur, and it will instantly burn. If iron filings be thrown upon red hot nitre, they will detonate and burn.

Water of Different Temperatures in the Same Vessel.

Of heat and cold, as of wit and madness, it may be said that “thin partitions do their bounds divide.” Thus, paint one half of the surface of a tin pot with a mixture of lamp black and size, and leave the other half or side bright; fill the vessel with boiling water, and by dipping a thermometer, or even the finger, into it shortly after, it will be found to cool much more rapidly upon the blackened than the bright side of the pot.

Warmth of Different Colors.

Place upon the surface of snow, as upon the window-sill, in bright daylight or sunshine, pieces of cloth of the same size and quality, but of different colors, black, blue, green, yellow and white; the black cloth will soon melt the snow beneath it, and sink downwards; next the blue, and then the green; the yellow but slightly; but the snow beneath the white cloth will be as firm as at first.

Laughing Gas.

The above fanciful appellation has been given to nitrous oxide, from the very agreeable sensations excited by inhaling it. In its pure state it destroys animal life, but loses this noxious quality when inhaled, because it becomes blended with the atmospheric air which it meets in the lungs. This gas is made by putting three or four drams of nitrate of ammonia in crystals into a small glass retort, which being held over a spirit lamp, the crystals will melt, and the gas be evolved.

Having thus produced the gas, it is to be passed into a large bladder having a stop-cock; and when you are desirous of exhibiting its effects you cause the person who wishes to experience them to first exhale the atmospheric air from the lungs, and then quickly placing the cock in his mouth you turn it, and bid him inhale the gas. Immediately a sense of extraordinary cheerfulness, fanciful flights of imagination, an uncontrollable propensity to laughter, and a consciousness of being capable of great muscular exertion, supervene. It does not operate in exactly the same manner on all persons; but in most cases the sensations are agreeable, and have this important difference from those produced by wine or spirituous liquors, that they are not succeeded by any depression of mind.

Magic Vapor.

Provide a glass tube about three feet long and half an inch in diameter; nearly fill it with water, upon the surface of which pour a little colored ether; then close the open end of the tube carefully with the palm of the hand, invert it in a basin of water, and rest the tube against the wall. The ether will rise through the water to the upper end of the tube; pour a little hot water over the tube, and it will soon cause the ether to boil within, and its vapor may thus be made to drive nearly all of the water out of the tube into the basin. If, however, you then cool the tube by pouring cold water over it, the vaporized ether will again become a liquid, and float upon the water as before.

Gas from the Union of Metals.

Nearly fill a wine glass with diluted sulphuric acid, and place in it a wire of silver and another of zinc, taking care that they do not touch each other, when the zinc will be changed by the acid, but the silver will remain inert. But cause the upper ends of the wires to touch each other, and a stream of gas will issue from them.

Green Fire.

A beautiful green fire may be thus made: Take of flour of sulphur thirteen parts, nitrate of baryta seventy-seven, chlorate of potash five, metallic arsenic two, and charcoal three. Let the nitrate of baryta be well dried and powdered; then add to it the other ingredients, all finely pulverized, and exceedingly well mixed and rubbed together. Place a portion of the composition in a small tin pan, having a polished reflector fitted to one side, and set light to it, when a splendid green illumination will be the result. By adding a little calamine it will burn more slowly.

Combustion of Three Metals.

Mix a grain or two of potassium with an equal quantity of sodium; add a globule of quicksilver, and the three metals, when shaken, will take fire and burn vividly.

To Make Paper Apparently Incombustible.

Take a smooth cylindrical piece of metal, about one inch and a half in diameter, and eight inches long. Wrap very closely round it a piece of clean writing paper, then hold the paper in the flame of a spirit lamp, and it will not take fire. But it may be held there for a considerable time without being in the least affected by the flame. If the paper be strained over a cylinder of wood it is quickly scorched.

Heat Not to be Estimated by Touch.

Hold both hands in water which causes the thermometer to rise to ninety degrees, and when the liquid has become still, you will be insensible to the heat, and that the hand is touching anybody. Then remove one hand to water that causes the thermometer to rise to two hundred degrees, and the other in water at thirty-two degrees.

After holding the hands thus for some time remove them, and again immerse them in the water at ninety degrees. Then you will find warmth in one hand and cold in the other. To the hand which had been immersed in the water at thirty-two degrees, the water at ninety degrees will feel hot; and to the hand which had been immersed in the water at two hundred degrees, the water at ninety degrees will feel cool. If, therefore, the touch in this case be trusted, the same water will be judged to be hot and cold at the same time.

Flame Upon Water.

Fill a wine glass with cold water, pour lightly upon its surface a little ether; light it by a slip of paper, and it will burn for some time.

Rose-colored Flame Upon Water.

Drop a globule of potassium, about the size of a large pea, into a small cup nearly full of water containing a drop or two of strong nitric acid; the moment that the metal touches the liquid it will float upon its surface, enveloped with a beautiful rose-colored flame, and entirely dissolve.

Currents in Boiling Water.

Fill a large glass tube with water, and throw into it a few particles of bruised amber or shreds of litmus; then hold the tube by a handle for the purpose, upright in the flame of a lamp, and as the water becomes warm it will be seen that currents, carrying with them the pieces of amber will begin to ascend in the center, and to descend towards the circumference of the tube. These currents will soon become rapid in their motions, and continue till the water boils.

Hot Water Lighter than Cold.

Pour into a glass tube, about ten inches long and one inch in diameter, a little water colored with pink or other dye; then fill it up gradually and carefully with colorless water, so as not to mix them; apply heat at the bottom of the tube, and the colored water will ascend and be diffused throughout the whole.

Expansion of Water by Cold.

All fluids except water diminish in bulk till they freeze. Thus, fill a large thermometer tube with water, say of the temperature of eighty degrees, and then plunge the bulb into pounded ice and salt, or any other freezing mixture; the water will go on shrinking in the tube till it has attained the temperature of about forty degrees, and then, instead of continuing to contract till it freezes, it will be seen slowly to expand, and consequently to rise in the tube until it congeals.

In this case the expansion below forty degrees and above forty degrees seem to be equal, so that the water will be of the same bulk at thirty-two degrees as at forty-eight degrees, that is, at eight degrees above or below forty degrees.

The Cup of Tantalus.

This pretty toy may be purchased at any optician’s for seventy-five cents. It consists of a cup in which is placed a human standing figure concealing a syphon or bent tube, with one end longer than the other. This rises in one leg of the figure to reach the chin, and descends through the other leg, through the bottom of the cup to a reservoir beneath. If you pour water in the cup it will rise in the shorter leg by its upward pressure, driving out the air before it through the longer leg; and when the cup is filled above the bend of the syphon, that is, level with the chin of the figure, the pressure of the water will force it over into the longer leg of the syphon, and the cup will be emptied, the toy thus imitating Tantalus, of mythology, who is represented by the poets as punished in Erebus with an insatiable thirst, and placed up to the chin in a pool of water, which, however, flowed away as soon as he attempted to taste it.

The Magic Whirlpool.

Fill a glass tumbler with water, throw upon its surface a few fragments or thin shavings of camphor, and they will instantly begin to move, and acquire a motion both progressive and rotary, which will continue for a considerable time. During these rotations if the water be touched by any substance which is at all greasy, the floating particles will quickly dart back, and, as if by a stroke of magic, be instantly deprived of their motion and vivacity.

In like manner, if thin slices of cork be steeped in sulphuric ether in a closed bottle for two or three days, and then placed upon the water, they will rotate for several minutes, like the camphor, until the slices of cork, having discharged all their ether, and become soaked with water, they will keep at rest.

If the water be made hot the motion of the camphor will be more rapid than in cold water, but it will cease in proportionately less time. Thus, provide two glasses, one containing water at fifty-eight degrees, and the other at two hundred and ten degrees; place raspings of camphor upon each at the same time; the camphor in the first glass will rotate for about five hours, until all but a very minute portion has evaporated, while the rotation of the camphor in the hot water will last only nineteen minutes. About half the camphor will pass off and the remaining pieces, instead of being dull, white and opaque, will be vitreous and transparent, and evidently soaked with water. The gyrations, too, which at first will be very rapid, will gradually decline in velocity until they become quite sluggish.

The stilling influence of oil upon waves has become proverbial. The extraordinary manner in which a small quantity of oil instantly spreads over a very large surface of troubled water, and the stealthy manner in which even a rough wind glides over it must have excited the admiration of all who have witnessed it.

By the same principle a drop of oil may be made to stop the motion of the camphor, as follows: Throw some camphor, both in slices and in small particles, upon the surface of water, and while they are rotating dip a glass rod into oil of turpentine. Then allow a single drop thereof to trickle down the inner side of the glass to the surface of the water. The camphor will instantly dart to the opposite point of the liquid surface, and cease to rotate.

If a few drops of sulphuric or muriatic acid be let fall into the water, they will gradually stop the motion of the camphor, but if camphor be dropped into nitric acid, diluted with its own bulk of water, it will rotate rapidly for a few seconds and then stop.

If a piece of the rotating camphor be attentively examined with a lens, the currents of the water can be well distinguished, jetting out, chiefly from the corners of the camphor, and bearing it round with irregular force.

The currents, as given out by the camphor, may also be seen by means of the microscope; a drop or two of pure water being placed upon a slip of glass, with a particle of camphor floating upon it. By this means the current may be detected, and it will be seen that they cause the rotations.

A flat watch-glass may be employed, raised a few inches and supported on a wire ring, kept steady by thrusting one end into an upright piece of wood like a retort stand. Then put the camphor and water in the watch-glass, and place under the frame a sheet of white paper, so that it may receive the shadow of the glass, camphor, etc., to be cast by a steady light, placed above, and somewhat on one side of the watch-glass.

On observing the shadow, which may be considered a magnified representation of the object itself, the rotations and currents can be distinguished.

Fire Under Water.

Put thirty grains of phosphorus into a bottle which contains three or four ounces of water. Place the vessel over a lamp and give it a boiling heat. Balls of fire will soon be seen to issue from the water after the manner of an artificial firework, attended with the most beautiful coruscations.

To Light Steel.

Make a piece of steel red in the fire, then hold it with a pair of pincers or tongs; take in the other hand a stick of brimstone and touch the piece of steel with it. Immediately after their contact you will see the steel melt and drop like a liquid.

A Test of Love.

Put into a phial some sulphuric ether, color it red with alkanet, then saturate the tincture with spermaceti. This preparation is solid ten degrees above freezing point, and melts and boils at twenty degrees. Place the phial which contains it in a lady’s hand and tell her that if in love, the solid mass will dissolve. In a few minutes the substance will become fluid.

An Egg Pushed Into a Wine Bottle.

To accomplish this seemingly incredible act requires the following preparation: You must take an egg and soak it in strong vinegar, and in process of time its shell will become quite soft so that it may be extended lengthways without breaking; then insert it into the neck of a small bottle, and by pouring cold water upon it, it will reassume its former figure and hardness. This is really a complete curiosity, and baffles those who are not in the secret to find out how it is accomplished. If the vinegar used to saturate the egg is not sufficiently strong to produce the required softness of shell, add one teaspoonful of strong acetic acid to every two tablespoonfuls of vinegar. This will render the egg perfectly flexible, and of easy insertion into the bottle, which must then be filled with cold water.

A Chemical Fountain.

Take two small glass jars and close them with corks. In each of these pierce two holes and introduce a glass tube curved in the form of a lengthened V. The two extremities of this tube must not reach further than just a little below the inner surface of the corks. In one jar pour water until it is three-quarters full, and pass through the second hole of the cork a straight glass tube, open at both ends and reaching nearly the bottom. This jar must be hermetically corked. (If necessary, seal the top.) In the other jar put some chalk, and in the second hole of the cork, left free, pass the extremity of a paper funnel in which you place a pellet of wax or putty.

Your apparatus thus being ready, through the funnel pour some vinegar, or better still, some sulphuric acid. The latter ingredient coming in contact with the chalk, forms carbonic acid, which, not being able to escape through the funnel closed by the pellet, passes through the curved tube into the other jar and is dissolved in the water.

After some time a strong pressure will be exercised on the liquid, and the water rising rapidly up through the vertical tube, will spout out as from a fountain.

This experiment may be varied and reduced to a simpler one. Take one jar, fill it up two-thirds with water, and fit it with a cork with two holes, through which pass two tubes; the one going to the bottom, the other resting just over the surface of the liquid. The latter should be fitted with a receiver.

Seal the cork so as to render it air-tight. In the top receiver pour water, which will go down into the jar and raise the level of the water already contained in it.

The air, being compressed, will act upon the liquid mass in the lower jar, and the water will escape through the free tube in a jet with more or less force according to the pressure exercised.

Weighing Gases.

Do not be cast down because you see another term to be explained. A gas is, you may have already guessed, simply a fluid. Matter exists in three states, solid, liquid and gaseous. Everything can exist in these three states under different conditions of heat and pressure.

For instance, ice, water, and steam are precisely the same thing, a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen, though in different states. Hence steam is simply the gaseous form of ice or water. Now some gases are heavier than air, and among them is carbonic acid, a gas given off from the lungs in breathing.

By means of a very simply-constructed balance, you can prove this gas to be heavier than air. Sounds queer, doesn’t it? to talk of weighing something that you cannot handle or see.

It is not difficult to do. Bend some wire, minding that the beams of the balance are curved as in the figure.

For one side of the scales a strong cardboard box will answer admirably; for the other the lid of a round box will serve. Hang the whole on a string and adjust it by putting some grains of sand in the round scale on which the weights are placed, to make each side balance one another and the scales are ready for use.

The production of carbonic acid is easy. Pour a little sulphuric acid and water over some chalk. Collect the gas given off in a bottle or jar. In doing so you need not be afraid that it will escape, since it is heavier than the air.

In pouring it in the box of the scale, you will see the box sink down, which is clearly an indication that the gas, which has just been poured into the scale is heavier than the air, whose place it has taken. This experiment may be tried in other curious ways.

In Water but not Wet.

With some lycopodium, powder the surface of a large or small vessel of water; you may then challenge any one to drop a piece of money into the water, and that you will get it with the hand without wetting your skin. The lycopodium adheres to the hand, and prevents its contact with the water. A little shake of the hand after the feat is over will dislodge the powder.

Image of a Volcano.

This is another experiment on the density of liquids. In a small jar put some wine or colored alcohol, and close it with a cork, through which you have passed a small tube, a quill or a hollow straw. In lowering this jar gently in a pail full of water, you will soon see the liquid escape and rise to the surface of the water, describing spirals which resemble smoke, and give a pretty good image, considerably diminished, of a volcano.

Reciprocal Images.

Make two holes in the wainscot of a room, each a foot high and ten inches wide, and about a foot distant from each other. Let these apertures be about the height of a man’s head, and in each of them place a transparent glass in a frame like a common mirror.

Behind the partition, and directly facing each aperture, place two mirrors inclosed in the wainscot, in an angle of forty-five degrees. These mirrors are each to be eighteen inches square, and all the space between must be inclosed with pasteboard painted black, and well closed that no light can enter; let there be also two curtains to cover them, which you may draw aside at pleasure.

When a person looks into one of these fictitious mirrors, instead of seeing his own face, he will see the object that is in front of the other; thus, if two persons stand at the same time before these mirrors, instead of each seeing himself, they will reciprocally see each other.

There should be a sconce with a lighted candle placed on each side of the two glasses in the wainscot, to enlighten the faces of the persons who look in them, or the experiment will not have so remarkable an effect.

Imitation of Animal Tints.

To accomplish this metamorphosis, it is necessary to have earthen vases which have little edges or rims near their mouths, and should be of a size sufficiently large to hold suspended the bird or flower which you intend placing in them. You should likewise be provided with stoppers of cork, of a diameter equal to that of their mouths. To make an experiment upon some bird, it is necessary to commence by making a hole in the stopper, sufficiently large to contain the neck of the bird without strangling it. This done, you divide the diameter of the stopper into two equal parts so as to facilitate the placing of it around the neck without doing injury to the bird. The two parts being brought together, you place at the bottom of the vase an ounce of quicklime, and beneath that a quarter of an ounce of sal ammoniac. When you perceive the effervescence commence to take place, you promptly insert the stopper, to which the bird is attached, leaving the neck outside. The plumage of the body, exposed to this effervescent vapor, will become impregnated with the various colors produced by this chemical combination.

Melting a Coin.