Religion and science; Science -- Juvenile literature
But does it work down and up? Did any one ever know of gravitation
raising anything? O yes, many things. A balloon may weigh as much as
a ton, but when inflated it weighs less than so much air; so the
heavier air flows down under and shoulders it up. When a heavy weight
and a light one are hung over a pulley, the light one goes up because
gravity acts more on the other. Water poured down a long tube will
rise if the tube is bent up into a shorter arm.
Exactly. So we bore a four-inch hole down to the salt and put in an
iron tube.
We do not care about the water. It is no bother. Then inside of this
tube we put a two-inch tube that is a few feet higher. Now pour water
down the small longer tube. It saturates itself with salt, and comes
flowing over the top of the shorter tube as easily as water runs down
hill. Multiply the wells, dry out the water, and you have your two
thousand barrels of salt lifted every day--just as easy as thinking!
We want a steady, unswerving force that will pull our clock hands with
an exact motion day and night, year in and year out. We hang up a
string, and ask gravitation to take hold and pull. We put on some lead
or brass for a handle, to take hold of. It takes hold and pulls,
unweariedly, unvaryingly, and ceaselessly.
It turns single water-wheels with a power of more than twelve hundred
horses.
It holds down houses, so that they are not blown away. It was made to
serve man, and it works without a grumble.
Thus the higher force in nature always prevails over the lower, and the
greater amount over the less amount of the same force. What is the
highest force?
THE FAIRY PULLS GREAT LOADS
Far back in the hills west of Mauch Chunk, Pa., lie great beds of coal.
They were made under the sea long ages ago, raised up, roofed over by
the Allegheny Mountains, and kept waiting as great reservoirs of power
for the use of man.
But how can these mountains be gotten to the distant cities by the sea?
Faith in what power can say to these mountains, "Be thou removed far
hence, and cast into the sea?" It is easy.
Along the winding sides of the mountains have been laid two rails like
steel ribbons for a dozen miles, from the coal beds to water and
railroad transportation. Put a half dozen loaded cars on the track,
and with one man at the brake, lest gravitation should prove too
willing a helper, away they go, through the springtime freshness or the
autumn glory, spinning and singing down to the point of universal
distribution.
[Illustration: Incline at Mauch Chunk.]
On one occasion the brake for some reason would not work. The cars
just flew like an arrow. The man's hair stood up from fright and the
wind. Coming to a curve the cars kept straight on, ran down a bank,
dashed right into the end of a house and spilled their whole load in
the cellar. Probably no man ever laid in a winter's supply of coal so
quickly or so undesirably.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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