Page:On the various forces of nature and their relations to each other.djvu/40

36 me very much when a boy. I read it in a conjuring book, and this was how the problem was put to us: "How," as the book said, "how to hang a pail of water, by means of a stick, upon the side of a table" (fig. 8). Now, I have here a table, a piece of stick, and a pail, and the proposition is, how can that pail be hung to the edge of this table? It is to be done; and can you at all anticipate what arrangement I shall make to enable me to succeed ? Why, this. I take a stick, and put it in the pail between the bottom and the horizontal piece of wood, and thus give it a stiff handle—and there it is; and what