SCIENCE NOTES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 201, 4 May 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

SCIENCE NOTES.

A SMALL BRA IX. A man of 22, who had lain in bed all his life, and could only wave his right arm, his head and neck, and had never learned to recognise his mother's voice or faith, was recently described by Dr. A. Hill in a lecture on "Brain: the Soul's Mechanism." He explained that this man's brain had developed to only onethird of the normal size, yet there; was nothing in the shape of the head to indicate that there was anything wrong. To call him an idiot would be an insult to the class of idiots, for he was practically nothing more than a dog! HOW TO AVOID XELIRASTHEXfA. Xo matter how hard you must work during business hours, you, at any rate, can follow (says a writer in the London Magazine) the golden health rule of leaving every business thought and worry behind you at the office at night. Plan your leisure hours, particularly your evening, so that as little brain force as possible is wasted. The man who knows how to play ami "relax" out of office hours rarely suffers from brain fag. MARRIAGE IS DEATH IN TUBERCULOSIS. The Family Doctor counsels against marriage where tuberculosis is active in either sex. Flick has impressively declared: "Many a young man has sacrificed on the altar of Hymen his chances of recovery"; and it is equally trite that when consumption is hanging about a girl the distance between the marriage bed and the grave is usually short with her. The husband, if lie 'does not become a widower soon after the birth of the first child, may count upon a perpetually ailing wife. HOW TO DISCOVER FOOD ADULTERATION. A very interesting article appears in Pearson's Magazine, entitled "Simple Tests for Food Frauds." It explains in a concise and practical manner some simple tests which enable us to ascertain whether our daily food is being adulterated. Some excellent photographs illustrate the article, showing how to apply the various tests. "Milk, butter, jam, coffee, tea, bread—in fact, all the necessaries of life—arc adulterated, while eggs are constantly being sold as newly-laid when they are really imported eggs, laid, possible, weeks before. To test the quality of an egg, hold it in front of a candle in a dark room. A new-laid egg will show an air space at the top. In an egg still fresh, but not quite new laid, this space will be filled up. A bad egg presents a curious patchy appearance. To test the quality of bread, take two pieces of equal weight and bake for half an hour. The better sample is that which then weighs the heavier. Jam is very often adulterated with various dyes. This is an easily applied method of testing it: Mix some of the suspected jam with an equal quantity of warm water, place a niece of wool in the mixture, and boil for half an hour. Then wash the wool thoroughly. If the stain washes out, the jam is pure;, if it will not wash out, then the jam contains a chemical dye. Impure coffee, when put into water, quickly discolors it, and a sediment forms at the bottom of the glass. Pure coffee, on the other hands, floats for some time and does not discolor the water."

A CURIOUS EXPERIMENT.

An apparatus has been constructed by accident by a park superintendent named Long, of Long Beach, California, that has been pronounced the nearest approach to a realisation of the dream of perpetual motion ever yet made by human agency. The difficulty is that neither Mr. Long nor anyone who ha.s seen his apparatus has been able to find out what it is that makes it go. Like other park superintendents (says the Philadelphia Record), Mr. Long found it impossible to make the public "keep off the grass." So, in lieu of the customary sign, he decided to build a barrier at one point where everyone was accustomed to take a short cut across the lawn in the rear of the Long Beach public library. In September, 1010. he strung a w'ire between two trees across a well-worn path in the grass, to the care of which he had given a good deal of unavailing attention. Then it occurred to him that the slander wire was not sufficiently conspicuous, and the hurrying pedestrians were likely to receive their first notice of the presence of the newly-constructed barrier by forcible and, possibly, painful collision with it. So he procured a board, 16ft long, three inches wide, and one inch thick. Four feet from each end he bored a hole. Through each hole he inserted a short wire, and by means of these short wires he suspended the board from the long wire strung between the trees. The only purpose of the board was to serve as a danger signal, showing to pedestrians that the path across the grass was closed, so that no one might run into the wire without noticing it. In a day or two Mr. Long noticed that his board was attracting a disproportionate amount .of attention, and when he enquired what was the cause, he was met by the query: "What makes it go?" It was bobbing up and down in a most unaccountable manner, one end going up perhaps eight or ten inches, while the other end was correspondingly depressed, and the motion then being reversed. Tt has continued to oscillate m this manner ever since with no si«n of weariness. Inasmuch as it has oscillated for more than a year with no visible or discoverable external impetus, Mr. Long t'eels that he has constructed something very much like a perpetual motion apparatus, even though he cannot tell why it moves, and does not believe thai In- can construct another. One end of (h,. wire is fastened around a. large pepper tree, and the other around a small cedar. . The board oscillates most vigorously when the atmosphere is still, and least vigorously when a strong wind is blowing, but it never stops unless held. Then it begins to move again as soon as released. What makes it go? Among the suggestions advanced are the following:—That its motion is caused by the unequal vibration of the trees of different sizes and different species between which it is suspended; that it is made to vibrate b v the ocean tides' it being but a \\-\\ hundred feet to the beach; that electric currents are in sonic way responsible, and that it indicates seismic disturbances deep down in tin earth, being in California's earthquake belt. Most of these attempts at ex. planatiou are absurd, and none, are at al satisfactory. The bulletless gun has at last mad< its. appearance. It is a German in veiitiou, and instead of bullets, it shoot a gas which temporarily blinds am chokes the victim. The cartridge usee contains several ingredients which, wliw exploded, combine to form a vapor of : peculiar character. The gun itself dil fers very little in appearance and mecli anism from the ordinary double-actio revolver. It holds live 'cartridges.