Wonders of physical science

THE land of Italy is shaped like a boot, and at the toe of the boot lies a three-cornered island called Sicily. It was famous in ancient times for its cities, temples, and palac...

WHEN Alexander the Great overcame the Egyptians, he sailed along the African coast past the mouths of the river Nile until he came to a place which seemed to him suitable for bu...

TO the east of the Red Sea there is a land called Arabia. Part of it is a desert over which a wind, called the simoom, blows its suffocating blasts. Another part is fertile moun...

THE ancients were in the habit of consulting books written by old masters whenever they were puzzled by an unknown power or force of nature. Instead of making experiments they w...

THE man who is considered the greatest of all pioneers of science was born in the year 1564 at the city of Pisa, in the north of Italy. He first studied medicine, but after a fe...

THE ancient philosophers divided all things into four elements--earth, water, air, and fire. Of these, or a mixture of them, they thought that all visible things were made up. N...

They made a large number of experiments, and gradually allowed the results of the experiments to force them into a certain way of looking at things. One man of science who adopt...

IT has long been supposed that the steam-engine was invented by an Englishman of the name of James Watt. But the real inventor of the steam-engine was Denis Papin, a French doct...

WHEN the ships of the Carthaginians sailed round the coast of Spain and France so far as Cornwall, to sell their purple cloth in exchange for tin, they sometimes brought home wi...

THE electric machine was used for extracting what was called the “electric fluid” out of a body by rubbing. The fluid in its passage through the air made a spark and a noise. It...

WHEN two persons engage in ordinary conversation, they really use two methods of communication. Both methods are extremely complicated. By means of mouth, tongue, and throat, th...

IN the electric telegraph, the electric current is made to turn a magnetic needle, or move an electric pen at a distance. When the distance becomes very great, as in the telegra...

MAN is not the only living being which sees by artificial light. Cats’ eyes shine in the dark. So do glow-worms, and in South America there are some insects which shed so bright...

IT is strange that the man who did most for the progress of the science of electricity in the nineteenth century was the son of a London blacksmith. That man was Michael Faraday...

THE telegraph pole is one of the signs of civilisation. Along every railway the telegraph poles, with their insulating cups and strands of wires, stand like a military guard, co...

IT is not given to many men to make such a wonderful discovery as fell to the lot of Professor Röntgen in the year 1895. If anyone wishes to mention something very new and wonde...

WHEN we read of the great inventions of the past, we are apt to think that they would in any case have been invented some time or other, even though the great inventors themselv...