Observatory Built of Junk
Great Earthquake Registered on Homemade Instrument—Horsehairs Make Hygrometer
WHEN slippage along an old fault sent violent earth tremors through southern California recently, it wrote a detailed story upon homemade instruments in an amateur scientist’s laboratory near the center of the disturbance. Upon the black drum of a home-constructed seismograph, it swung a needle, giving its builder, Martin G. Murray, a record of the disaster. Ever since last December, Murray had noticed an increase in the number of tremors. Fom December 16 to 26, his instrument registered fourteen shocks. In March came the quake that left hundreds of buildings in ruins.
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Mechanics of Magic
By “DUNNINGER”
AN electric lamp, consisting of a tubular fixture, containing a battery, with a switch operable from the bottom, and a small globe, socketed beneath an inverted glass hood (such as illustrated) has recently been placed upon the market, and is securable at every large electrical supply house.
Should the mechanically inclined reader, however, prefer, the diagram will enable him to construct one of these, with but little difficulty. As will be noticed, the lighting and extinguishing of the bulb depends upon the plungerlike projecting peg arrangement at the bottom of the fixture. An excellent “spirit” effect is obtained by causing this light to mystically go on and off, guided, apparently, only by the will of the wonder worker.
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Well they certainly look like they’re having the time of their lives.
It’s Fun to Play This Indoor Football Game
Played by two to six persons, this game provides endless fun for members of your family or your party guests. The object of the game is to drive a table-tennis ball into one of the two goal baskets at opposite ends of the box. This is done by hitting the ball with wooden paddles attached to dowel rods, which are turned and pushed back and forth by hand. There are eight rods; the two center ones have four paddles each, the next two toward each goal have three each, while the next pair have two paddles each and the last two next to the goals have only one paddle each.
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This would be even cooler if there was a string to make his nose grow.
Pinocchio the Puppet
HOW TO DUPLICATE THE AMUSING LITTLE MODEL WALT DISNEY’S ANIMATORS USED
By HI SIBLEY
PINOCCHIO, the wistful puppet created by Geppetto, the wood carver, in Walt Disney’s second full-length production, is an inviting subject for either a homemade puppet or an amusing and companionable little doll. The accompanying illustrations show how to go about making one patterned after the original, which was created by the Disney model department as an inspiration to the animators drawing Pinocchio.
If you are an expert wood carver yourself, the head might be fashioned from a solid block of soft white pine and the nose inserted (Fig. 1), but a surer way to achieve a fair likeness is first to make a clay model. From this a plaster-of-Paris mold is taken, and the head is cast in plastic composition wood (Figs. 2, 3, and 4). The hat is made in the same way as the head and glued on.
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UPDATE: As reader carmarks points out in the comments below, these experiments can be extremely dangerous and you should not actually try to perform any of them. Hydrofluoric Acid can kill you so, be warned.
Thrilling Stunts with a Glass-Eating Chemical
Etching your laboratory glassware is only one of the many possibilities offered by compounds of the active element fluorine
By RAYMOND B. WAILES
NOT long ago, a noted chemist told of a solvent powerful enough to dissolve nearly every known material. If the water on the earth were replaced with a liquid called selenium oxychloride, he said, we should have to carry umbrellas made of glass, platinum, or tungsten whenever it rained, for those are about the only substances that the fluid does not attack. There is a more familiar chemical, however, so corrosive that it could even eat its way through a glass umbrella. Its name is hydrofluoric acid, and it is one of the interesting compounds of the highly active element fluorine with which you will enjoy experimenting in your home laboratory.
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Yes, all you need to recreate the universe is a hand-drill, a thumb tack and some oil. Amazing!
Simple Experiment Shows How the Universe Was Formed
By Gaylord Johnson
A TINY globule of machine oil, spinning around in a beaker of wood alcohol, will reenact for you one of the most stupendous dramas of the universe—the formation of a giant spiral nebula.
Photographs of these far-off galaxies of stars made through giant telescopes show that, in spite of minor physical differences, they all have one feature in common: the main structure consists of two curving arms spiraling out from opposite sides of a central mass.
Obviously, this structure is the result of a whirling, centrifugal force. But why should there always be just two arms? That is what this simple demonstration will show you.
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Fun with Explosive Gases
Hydrocarbons Are a Subject for Many Spectacular Experiments in the Amateur’s Chemical Laboratory
By RAYMOND B. WAILES
WOULD you like to get gas from coal without heating the coal? To make an inflammable gas that will dissolve in certain liquids as easily as sugar does in coffee ? To produce a gas that burns with a flame you can hardly perceive? Or to create fiery bubbles of gas, jumping about like grasshoppers, from simple everyday chemicals? These are some of the curious and interesting experiments with hydrocarbon gases that any amateur chemist can easily perform.
Hydrocarbon gases are compounds of carbon and hydrogen. A large proportion of all natural gases, including methane, ethane, propane, and butane, belong to this group. Manufactured illuminating gas—both coal gas and water gas—contains hydrocarbon gases, together with non-hydrocarbons such as hydrogen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen.
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Surprising Tests WITH Household AMMONIA
Simple Experiments and Home-made Apparatus Extend Your Knowledge and Speed the Work You Can Accomplish in Your Own Laboratory
by Raymond B. Wailes
IT IS surprising what the amateur chemist can do with a fifteen-cent bottle of ordinary household ammonia.
Being a mixture of ammonia dissolved in water, this pungent-smelling liquid offers an ever-ready supply of ammonia gas for the home laboratory. Even at room temperature, the gas is released from the liquid. By heating it, the experimenter can obtain the gas in larger quantities.
Strictly speaking, household ammonia is not ammonia at all, but ammonia water or ammonium hydroxide. Although ammonia can be liquefied, it is a colorless gas at normal temperatures. The fact that it dissolves readily in water makes the manufacture of ammonia water possible.
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EXPERIMENTAL Arc Furnace MELTS ANYTHING
How to wind a simple coil reactance that controls the current, protects the fuses, and cuts down greatly the cost of the electric power
By Alfred P. Lane
HEAT so terrific that no known substance is able to withstand it for long can be developed in your home laboratory with nothing more than a pair of electric light carbons, a small crucible, and some means of controlling the flow of the electric current from the house mains through the arc.
Most electrical experimenters attempt to use an old toaster or electric grill in series with the arc. This works all right, but the current flow is limited to three or four amperes and is greatest when the carbons are in contact and the arc is producing the least amount of heat. Adding another toaster or grill in parallel with the first one doubles the current through the arc, doubles the cost of operation, and still is open to the objection that the current flow is greatest when the arc is least effective.
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