Science Notes and News.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 707, 26 September 1914, Page 3

Science Notes and News.

FLAMELESS FIRE. An engineer lias discovered a way to obtain fire without flame. His apparatus consists of a porous plate or -mass of fire-resisting fragments, within which he mixes inflammable- gas and air in the right proportions. When the gas is first turned on and lighted it burns with a flame at the surface of the plate. When the air is turned on the flame disappears, but the heat increases. "SCENTING" EXPLbsiVES. The suggestion lias been made that a law be passed compelling all the manufacturers of explosives, especially nitro-glycerine, dynamite, and others of this class used for bombs, to impregnate these materials with some strong-smelling substance. It is believed that the presence of the explosive would be revealed to everybody near it, and that it would be impossible to store, manufacture, transport, or manipulate it in any way secretly. It would be its own detective in case of crime committed with it.

BULLETLESS REVOLVER. A German inventor has perfected a revolver that shoots without bullets ' and is intended to check and render harmless the victim instead of maiming him or crippling him. It is designed for home protection and for use in instances where it is not desirable to take chances of killing a person. ; The cartridge used contains several ingredients, which, when exploded, combine to form a vapour of a peculiar character. The gun itself differs very little in appearance, and mechanism from the ordinary double action revolver. It holds five cartridges. The action of the vapour may best be imagined by considering the position of the person shot at.. The appearance of the weapon, the report and the flare of the powder combine to convince the victim that he has beep shot at with an ordinary firearm. His eyes and mouth open in surprise, and the .gases generated by the combination of the chemicals envelop his head completely, penerating his eyes and affecting his sight. For several minutes he is practically blind. Simultaneously the mucous membrane of the nose and throat are irritated, and the victim sneezes and chokes. For a minute or two the victim finds it almost, impossible to breathe. It is obvious that 110 individual, even if he were as strong as Hercules, would be in a position to put up] much of a fight while in such a condition. The shotless revolver is intended principally for the protection of tourists, commercial travellers, doctors, cyclists, automobilists, bank officials, postmen, watchmen, and policemen. No one wants to kill a criminal unlesg it is absolutely necessary for one's own preservation, and this invention is intended to make such a course unnecessary.

AIR HARDER THAN ROOK. Dynamite affords a means of proving that there are times when air is harcler than rock, and that such times are during the fraction of an instant when the dynamite is exploding. Place some ordinary black gunpowder .upon a rock, and set it off with a fuse. The result is only a flash and a puff of smoke into the air, while the rock is merely blackened by the flame. Now place a stick of dynamite upon the same rock and set i't off. Instead of flashing into the air as the powder did, it will actually shatter the rock, if even there is nothing about the dynamite to bind it down ox- retain it. It is for this reason that tire common belief used to be held, and is held by many to-day, in fact, that dynamite, unlike other things, mil follow the line of the greatest resistance. But this is really not true. The laws of nature are to follow the lines of least resistance, and dynamite does exactly this by crashing through the rook instead of into the air, because for the moment conditions are such that the rock is really the line- of the 'least resistance, the air, about it being harder during that fraction of an instant when the explosion occurs. The black powd&r takes fire and explodes much more slowly than.the dynamite, so that the elastic air that encloses it, as it does everything, gives way gradually, and the force is lost in the atmosphere. "With dynamite the explosion has been so sudden, the attack on the air so instantaneous, that for a fraction of a second it actually resists. The force of the dynamite is so tremendous that it cannot wait, and it is turned into the rock, which, for the instant, becomes the line of least resistance. ' An illustration of this may be seen during a display of lightning. A fork of it strikes across the sky. It packs the air so densely that it can no longer make rapid progx-ess in that direction, and it turns aside, to follow the lino of least resistance. It cannot wait for the air to yield. It is tha same ,witK ! dynamite.