Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/54

44 by it with but little loss—perhaps none. Mercury is easily frozen by surrounding it with liquid air, and the solid thus formed is very hard, though if it is cooled down sufficiently it becomes brittle.

Alcohol can be frozen without difficulty by means of liquid air. By the aid of the lowest temperatures hitherto attainable it has only been possible to convert alcohol into a pasty mass. The frozen alcohol is as hard as ice. When alcohol is dropped into liquid air the drops retain the globular form. When taken out on a platinum loop the flame of a Bunsen burner does not set fire to it.

Phosphorescence is greatly increased by cooling substances down to the temperature of liquid air. This has been shown by means of water, milk, paper, eggs, and feathers. An egg and a feather could be distinctly seen in a dark room.

Scarlet iodide of mercury is converted into the yellow variety when it is subjected to the temperature of liquid air. Some other colors are changed under the same circumstances, but not enough is known of this subject to warrant a general statement.

Attention has already been called to the fact that liquid air loses its nitrogen more rapidly than it does its oxygen, and that, after a time, the residue contains a large proportion of oxygen. As combustion is combination with oxygen, combustion or burning takes place more readily in contact with this liquid oxygen than it does in the air. If a lighted match is attached to the end of a steel watch spring, and this then plunged beneath the surface of liquid air, the spring will soon take fire and burn brilliantly, the sparks flying off for some distance in beautiful coruscations. Hair felt, which does not burn in the air, burns in a flash when soaked with liquid air. Finally, when liquid air is confined in any vessel not capable of sustaining an enormous pressure, say about ten thousand pounds to the square inch, the vaporization goes on until the vessel bursts or the stopper is forced out. It might therefore be used as an explosive without any addition, but its manipulation is not altogether simple.

Now for the inevitable question: Of what use is liquid air likely to be? This is a perfectly proper question, and yet, if scientific workers always stopped to ask it, and would not work unless they could find a favorable answer, progress would, to say the least, be much slower than it is. Most great practical discoveries have necessarily passed through the plaything stage. Some of the most important discoveries have not even furnished playthings, and have found no practical applications as this expression is commonly understood. But the production of liquid air, while furnishing mankind with a beautiful and instructive plaything, seems likely to find