Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/940

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��Popular Science Monthly

��Are Metals Alive?

��CHANGES in hardness, strength or elasticity in certain metals may be due to conditions analogous to disease in organic tissues, according to some metal- lurgists. This theory of the disease of metals has been so far accepted in Ger- many that the Imperial Navy Yard at Wilhelmshafen sends metals regularly to "the autopsy room and dissecting tables" of Professor Heyn, a leader in this kind of work. This new conception of metals is due to the studies made some years ago by Professor Jagadis Chunder Bose, an East Indian physicist of Presi- dency College, Calcutta, who proved ex- perimentally that it is scientifically wrong to divide matter into "living" and "dead." He demonstrated that the phe- nomena which we commonly associate with lif eshould also beassociated with non- living metals, books, paper and the like.

It seems as if metallurgy will create a new and vastly important branch for itself — the branch of producing inocu- lating material for metals, which shall change their temper and form swiftly instead of waiting for the slow processes of forging and tempering that obtain to-day.

Heyn has been studying the modifica- tions in iron under all grades of temper- ature, and he holds that the metal passes through various stages of disease that produce structural changes just as

��the cells of plants and animals change in form, size and position. He heats copper in order to find why that metal suffers from over-heating, and he con- cludes that it becomes poisoned with copper protoxid, which so sickens it that its structure changes and partially breaks down.

The metallurgists have joined the chemists in erasing the line which divides all substances into organic and inorganic — just as the line between animal and plant life has ceased to exist. The German metallurgists have come to speak as a matter of course of the life that unfolds itself in steel under various temperatures that are applied to it in working it. Poison steel with hydrogen or hydrogenous matter and you so sicken it that it gets into a condition where it is as brittle as if it had been ruined in tempering.

Pure glycerin cannot be frozen by ordi- nary means, even at twenty degrees be- low zero. But, introduce a bit of glycerin that has already been frozen and the rest begins to congeal. This process is nothing more nor less than inoculating an inor- ganic substance with crystals in order to breed in it the condition of crystallization.

Bredig, a German investigator, found the point of infection in the crumbling tin roof of the Council House at Rothen- burg. The roof suffered from a disease, now known as tin pest.

��Answers to Sam Loyd's April Puzzles

��Answer to " Off His Beat "

The mathematical cop says that his con- versation with the Roundsman occured at 9:36 A. M., because 1/4 of the time from midnight would be 2 hours and 24 minutes, which added to 1/2 the time until midnight, 7 hours and 12 minutes, equals 9 hours and 36 minutes. Had the Roundsman not remarked it was morning, 7:12 P. M. would have been an equally correct answer.

Solution of "At the Auto Races "

The race of the three autos might have terminated in 26 varied results, as follows:

Assuming that all three finished six ways, viz: A, B, C; A, C, B; B, A, C; B, C, A; C, A, B; C, B, A. Then A, B, C in a dead heat or A, B; A, C or B, C in a dead heat for the first place. Then again, A first with B, C, in a dead heat for second or B first with A, C, second or C first with A, B, second. Then there are various results in which one or

��more of the cars fail to finish. All three might fail to finish. Then there are nine different results in which one car failed and with two failing to finish there are three ways.

Answer to "^Cheese and Crackers "

Let us call the weight of the cheese X, and the balance board would be 1/2 X. Four-fifths of the board, and therefore, 4/5 of its weight would be on one side of the balance point. Let us assume that the beam was 5 feet in length. Then on the cracker side, at the point 2 feet from the fulcrum (the average distance), would be a weight pressure of 2/5 X pounds. This being equivalent to a 1/5 X pounds pressure at the extreme end. On the cheese end of the beam would be a pressure of I 1/20 X pounds. This to balance would require a pressure of 21/80 X pounds at the end of the long arm. Since a pressure of 16/80 X already existed, the difference to be made up in crackers would be 5/80 X.

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