Boy Chemist “Eats Up” Course in Foodstuffs
Relationship between the fields of chemistry and cookery is the research project that interests seventeen-year-old Edgar Friedenberg, the youngest man ever to appear on a program of the American Chemical Society. Friedenberg is pictured below taking time off from his studies in synthetic foodstuffs to try a little practical work with the frying pan.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Dry Ice-Capades
Dry ice is very interesting stuff! Get yourself a chunk (handling it with gloves) and perform the simple experiments illustrated here.DRY ice is solid carbon dioxide. It’s very interesting stuff. For one thing, it sublimes at room temperature; that is, although a solid, it evaporates to form a gas without passing through the liquid state. The mist you see formed by dry ice is water “squeezed” out of the air because it has been chilled below the dewpoint.
Glass Making Easy for Home Chemist
By Raymond B. WailesBECAUSE of its importance in glass making and other industries, silicon opens a particularly interesting experimental field to the home chemist. In nature, silicon is almost as plentiful as oxygen. Yet, it hides itself well in its compounds. It never is found free and uncom-bined and can be separated from its associates only through clever chemical thievery in the laboratory.
Industrially, silicon is obtained by heating sand—a compound of silicon and oxygen—and coke to a high temperature in an electric furnace. The white-hot coke steals the oxygen from the sand to form carbon monoxide and frees the silicon. Although the amateur chemist will have no electric furnace in which to duplicate this process, he can obtain a similar result by heating sand and powdered magnesium over his ordinary laboratory gas burner.
Scientific Experiments with Toys
By Raymond B. Wailes
Many Novelty, Toy and “Jokers” Supply Stores sell small glass “meters” or “thermometers.” as they are called, attached to a card supposed to represent the quantity of intoxicating liquor the individual can consume, a state of health, denote a fortune, etc. The items are designed to provoke mirth and hilarity, but they operate on a scientific principle and can be used admirably for demonstrating some physical laws. What to do and how to conduct the experiments are details covered in the accompanying text.
Weird Stunts with Aluminum in the Home Laboratory
Electrical Experiments You Can Perform with This Most Useful Metal—An Easy Way to Purify Water Containing Sediment
By Raymond B. Wailes
OUTWARDLY aluminum is one of the least spectacular elements of the earth. Yet in the home laboratory, weird stunts reveal the strange properties that make it one of the world’s most useful metals.
Although at one time worth its weight in silver, chemistry has made aluminum one of our commonest metals. According to leading scientists, its uses will continue to grow. Even now railroads, steamships, and airplanes make use of its physical qualities for lightness combined with strength.
Most important of its chemical properties is its unquenchable thirst for oxygen. Pure aluminum left in the air soon becomes coated with an oxide. It is this characteristic that makes its impossible to obtain the metal in its free state and also forms the basis of thermit welding (P.S.M., Aug. ‘33, p. 50) and many other modern processes in industry.
To the home chemist, this fast-forming oxide of aluminum offers the means of performing two novel electrical experiments. For the first, immerse two sheets of aluminum foil in a small jar or beaker containing a solution of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate). Connect one sheet directly to one side of the house lighting circuit and the other sheet through a series-connected lamp to the other side.
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