CHEMISTRY
BIG LABORATORY GIVEN FREE!
Are you looking for a WONDERFUL FUTURE that can start at home right now? The NATIONAL SCHOOL OF CHEMISTRY offers a fascinating: correspondence course in PRACTICAL CHEMISTRY which will give you a wonderful education that can be used almost immediately to increase your income and your position in life, with prospects of a GLORIOUS FUTURE!
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England Now Has Gasoline Made from Coal
British motorists may now enjoy the novelty of buying gasoline made from coal, which has just been placed on public sale. The event marks the beginning of a great chemical industry by which England hopes to put 65,000 men to work and to end her dependence upon imported petroleum. A monster plant now rising at Billingham-on-Tees will transform 1,000 tons of coal daily into the synthetic fuel, using a process already in successful operation in a smaller experimental plant at the same site.
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Spectacular Fireworks
By STANLEY STEWART
IN making fireworks, if the experimenter will always remember that he is dealing with explosives that may pop off at any moment, and therefore exercises constant caution, the various spectacular night displays outlined in the accompanying article are not any more dangerous than playing with matches. At all times, care must be exercised in grinding the ingredients. Always use a clean mortar; always powder each chemical separately; when mixing, dump the required portions on a sheet of dry paper and use a wooden spatula, or gently rock the contents of the paper back and forth. Although the author is only fifteen years old he has been making fireworks for years and has not yet had one of them go off accidentally. The formulas contained in this article have all been tried and tested, and will be found to work perfectly.
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FUN with the HALOGENS
HOME EXPERIMENTS WITH A FAMOUS CHEMICAL FAMILY
By RAYMOND B. WAILES
WHENEVER the members of the halogen family put on an act, you can be sure there will be something doing in the way of entertainment. The nimblest of the family quartet undoubtedly is chlorine. You have seen this actor in several roles before—bleaching dyes, and attacking metals with accompanying pyrotechnics, for example—if you have followed this series of articles. Iodine has made a personal appearance before you as a chemical detective, revealing latent fingerprints on paper. Another member of the family, fluorine, has shown you its remarkable power of etching glass when teamed with hydrogen.
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Experiments With Oxygen FOR THE AMATEUR CHEMIST
A few common chemicals supplied by the druggist and simple apparatus is all that is required to produce these interesting experiments with oxygen.
by VERNON TRACEY
OXYGEN experiments form a very interesting field of adventure for the amateur chemist due to the fact that oxygen is one of the most active of the chemical elements. It readily combines with most any other element to form many different compounds. These compounds of oxygen and other elements are known as “oxides” and the process of combination is called “oxidation,” or more commonly known as burning. We see examples of oxidation every day in the burning of fuel, but this is not very active when one considers the fact that the air is only one-fifth oxygen, the rest being mainly nitrogen and a small percentage of other gases.
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Dangerous ACIDS MADE SAFELY BY Home Chemist
By Raymond B. Wailes
BECAUSE they enter into a wide variety of reactions, acids form an interesting and important group of chemicals. By preparing them in small quantities, the home experimenter can learn a great deal about chemistry and its many mysterious reactions and valuable processes.
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How Scientists Are Taking the Pinch Out of America’s Billion-Dollar Shoe Bill
New Tanning Discoveries Will Bring You Cheaper Footwear By John Walker Harrington
WELL-SHOD feet are among the essentials of health and long life,” declared Dr. John B. Huber in a recent article in POPULAR SCIENCE Monthly.
The magnitude of our national shoe bill is revealed in this story of new discoveries in tanning, which hold forth hope of a coming fall in every family’s expenses for footwear.
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Amuse Friends with CHEMICAL Stunts
DO YOU like to dabble with chemicals? It was a hobby with Thomas A. Edison during his youth and formed the basis of an education that later brought thousands of new inventions into the world. Far from being a “dry” science, chemistry can be very amusing and entertaining. How many people would believe that you could pour a little drinking water into a china bowl and cause it to burst forth with flames several feet high—without the use of matches?
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PRACTICAL AND MYSTIFYING HOME TESTS YOU CAN MAKE WITH IRON
By Raymond B. Wailes
MYSTIFYING and spectacular ‘effects give a keen interest to home experiments with iron and its compounds. The amateur chemist can make paint, produce molten iron from a simple mixture, and perform many other stunts that show why iron is man’s most useful metal.
Iron betrays its presence everywhere. Our blood gets its red color from the iron it contains. Soils, clays, bricks, and stones are colored by the iron in the earth’s crust.
A handful of ordinary nails or tacks will serve as the starting point for the home chemist’s experiments. From them he can produce several interesting iron compounds.
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Hints for Beginners in Amateur Chemistry
Join in the Fun of Experimenting at Home! This Article Tells How Easy It Is to Start
By RAYMOND B. WAILES
IF YOU have been following this series of articles for some time, you probably have already set up a more or less complete chemical workshop in which to carry on your experiments. However, there is always a new crop of beginners coming along—newcomers who would like to join the fun and who need some simple advice on equipment and working methods. Old-timers surely won’t begrudge this space to help others get started in the fascinating pastime of amateur chemistry—and perhaps their own memories will be refreshed with a pointer or two.
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How TO CONVERT OLD ELECTRIC LIGHT BULBS INTO CHEMICAL GLASSWARE
By Earl D Hay
EXPERIMENTS in an amateur chemical laboratory are much more interesting when they are made with the same kind of apparatus as that used in professional laboratories. As a rule, however, the home chemist experiences a great - shortage of flasks and endeavors to use various kinds of bottles as makeshifts, little realizing that he may make from burned-out electric light bulbs a great variety of useful flasks like those sold by chemical supply houses at from 20 to 75 cents each. The lamps used in the average home vary in size from 25 to 200 watts and are suitable for small Florence or boiling flasks. Larger flasks are made from 300-, 500-, and 1,000-watt lamps, which can be obtained from the janitors of stores and linemen of the city lighting companies.
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