Science Siftings

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 18, 2 May 1907, Page 35

Science Sif tings

Artificial Diamonds. ' The -famous French chemist, M. Moissan, has just died fnom appendicitis at the premature age of fiftyfour. -He was one of the gieat modern French scientists who gave Ase to the saying" that ' chemistry is a French science.' His most extraordinary achievement 'was his process for manufacturing diamonds. He had invented the Moissan oven for storing formidable quantities of caloric, and he had demonstrated that substances' which, till then, had resisted the highest temperatures could be- melted in his oven. In his patent apparatus he put carbon into a bath of molten iron, heated ' to a terrific degree, and the mixture thus obtained was suddenly plunged into' icy cold water, and' subjected to a tremendous reaction. The result was a solid crust which turned into a diamond. The eminence of M. Moissan was -recognised in recent times by the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. At the same t*xme, although M. Moissan was able to create diamonds, he does not seem to have, in any way, upset the diamond market in Kimberley. Clock of Glass Except Springs. After six years of work, Joseph Bayer, a Bohemian glass-worker of St. Louis, seventy-one years old, has , completed a working clock, every part of which, except the springs, is made of glass. r lhe plates and pillars which form the framework are of glass and are- bolted together with glass screws. T-he dial plate, hands, and^ shafts amxi cogwheels are of glass, and glass wedgps anid pins are used for fastening the various parts of the running gear together. All these parts are ground "to the average proportions 'of the metal parts of other clocks of the same size. Thje teeth of the cogwheels are cut with minute exactness. Only the balance, wheel is heavier and tliicker thaw it would be in an 'ordinary clock, but'it is f ashioneld -so as to properly control the movement of the whole whole machine. Like the clock itself, the key with which it is wound is of glass. The completion of the work was a matter of infinite pains. Some of the parts had to be mode over- and over as often as forty times before a dock that would go and keep time was produced. The builder sets a price on the finished model of £120. History in Trees. A remarkable instance of history being told by a tree , has been found by the felling of a giant Sequoias. This tree, which has just been cut down, revealed a most interesting history of the forest fires which had swept the region where for more than 2'ooo years the tree had existed. <• The effects of fires occurring centuries ago are registered in the trunks of the trees, and the record is completely concealed by subsequent healthy growth. The " tree which' supplies the instance of which we are speaking (says a scientific correspondent of the •' Morning Post ') had an enormous burn on one side, 30ft in height and occupying 18ft of its circumference. This burn was due to a fire which occurred in 1797, and the tree had therefore occupied more than a century in its -efforts to repair this injmy, its method being ingrowth of new tissue from the margin of the great 'black wound. The tree began its existence about 271 8.C., and in 245 A.D. .occurred a buriAng on the trunk three feet wide. "■ This fire was therefore in its 517 th year. A hundred and five years were occupied in covering this woundi.with new tissue. Far 1196 years no further injuries were registered. In 1441- A.D., at 1712 years of age, the. tree was burned a second time in two long grooves. Fach had its own system of repair. In 1580 A.D., at 1851 years of age, occurred another fire, causing a burn on the trunk two feet wide, 'which took fifty-six years to cover with new tissue. Two hundred and seventeen years of growth followed' this burn. In 1797 A.D. occurred the tremendous fire which burned the great scar eighteen feet wide. In the hundred odd years which have since gone by, the tree- had been repairing "the burn, and had reduced the exposed ' area by about four feet <of width.