SCIENCE SIFTINGS

New Zealand Tablet, 6 October 1921, Page 46

SCIENCE SIFTINGS

By “VOLT” |l=

NOSES AS CHEST PROTECTORS. How many people know that the nose is a natural filter? Its passages are furnished with numbers of minute hairs against which air must brush as it is breathed in. These hairs catch the tiny particles of dust and dirt which all air contains, preventing them from being carried into the delicate tissues of the throat and lungs. "When a quantity of small particles has been filtered by the nose, they set up an irritation, which causes you to sneeze and get rid of them. The nose has another important function; it serves to warm cold air before it reaches the lungs. The air, as it is taken in through the nostrils, passes along narrow passages which are often the same temperature as the body, and as it goes its chill is taken off. The nose, then, is also a very effective chest protector. That is why people who breathe through the nose are less liable to diseases of the chest and throat than those who breathe through the mouth. The latter take dirty, unfiltered air straight into the lungs, where its particles of dust, soot, or grit set up irritation, which paves the way for the microbes of disease. On cold days they pass quantities of unwarmed air direct to the lungs. THE MYSTERY GUN. The name of Sir Edgar Jones, M.P., having been mentioned in connection with the new* long-range noiseless gun with which experiments have just been made in America, I asked Sir Edgar if the reports received from America were correct (writes a correspondent to the Manchester Guardian). He replied: “I have seen it and took a lot of interest in it when I was in New York. But I am not interested in it as a gun, but in its application to industry, particularly to coal-mining and quarrying. It is a very small instrument, that will make blasting with powder unnecessary. These developments are proceeding, and one of these days I think we shall have a very considerable and remarkable development. “It is true that as a gun it will revolutionise gunnery, because it has no recoil and makes no noise. The inventor is not keen at all in applying his discoveries to destruction but in making them applicable to production. And it is from that point of view that I am interested. “Who is the inventor? He lives just outside London, and is working away to apply the invention to industrial purposes. But as a gun I think our own people were getting ready to use it before the war ended. The inventor is a very clever man. He was a member of the Inventions Board, and has several important inventions all over the world. The arrangements for the trials of which the cables speak now were made when I was in New York. “What of its applicability to mining?” “Well, here is the instrument” (measuring a space of about a foot). “The man with it goes up against the face of coal. He works the instrument, and * biff ’ splits the whole face of the coal. Then all he has to do is to get the coal out. It is not a blasting operation. It is just the delivery of a blow at a terrific velocity on a small patch which cracks the whole piece. It will crack granite or slate or any hard rock. It is very small but very complicated and very effective. There is no contact with the air and therefore no sound and no recoil. It is based on new mechanical principles absolutely.” Sir Edgar added that it was too early yet for experiments underground. As to the invention’s qualities as a gun, he said the difficulty with big guns hitherto had been that huge guns required huge carriages and a great foundation of concrete. But in this invention there was no noise or recoil. Fired .on board ship there would be none of the tremendous percussion which there hitherto had been.