PROFESSOR’S TRICKS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 February 1939, Page 7

PROFESSOR’S TRICKS

CIGARETTE LIT WITH ICE. SOME ILLUMINATING EXPERIMENTS. At the National Book Fair at Earl’s Court, introducing Professor A. M. Low, who lectured to a. crowded hall on “Conjuring With Science,” the chairman, Mr S. B. Watson, remarked tha‘, the speaker was well known not only as a popular scientist with great powers of exposition, but also as a distinguished author and a practical inventor.

Standing behind an array of glasses, jugs and test tubes, Professor Low said:

“This is a talk in which I shall take you all into my confidence and show you that science is far more romantic than any novel.” He did not profess to be a conjuror; but, with a series of simple experiments, he would show how many cases there were in industry where science had made a new and a happier world for the majority. He proceeded to do «a number of tricks, which, he explained, “boys and girls could do in the kitchen.” Noise, he said, actually made air hotter, and a bird could not hear a worm moving “a foot under the ground.”He poured plain water into apparently empty glasses to produce different colours from the same jug, .afterwards explaining that invisible threads, each with a colouring mixture at the end. were suspending in the air.

BROOMSTICK INERTIA. ' He lit a cigarette from a piece of ice, thus demonstrating the principle of a method of phosphorescent automatic illumination used for life saving at sea.

Tissue paper burst into flame when breathed on by a member of the audience, illustrating how welding may be done without electric power by the purchase of two-pennyworth of potassium.

One of the most popular demonstrations was the lifting of a heavy boy by four others, ostensibly by “electrical force,” but actually by auto-suggestion. A broomstick balanced by two pins at each end on two full glasses of water was smashed in half without any damage to the glasses. Professor Low described this as “a lesson in inertia when designing comfortable motorcars or racing cars for the future.” Then he placed seven pennies in a hat. This was taken to a member of the audience, who picked out one of the pennies, noted the year, and put it back. The hat' was then held behind the back of a young assistant, who at once took out the identical coin.

“It is really quite simple,” said Professor Low, “for the contact with a hand makes copper warm. All my assistant had to do was to pick the warmest coin in the hat!"