Endless Amusement: A Collection of Nearly 400 Entertaining Experiments in Various Branches of Science; Including Acoustics, Electricity, Magnetism, Arithmetic, Hydraulics, Mechanics, Chemistry, Hydrostatics, Optics; Wonders of the Air-Pump; All the Popular Tricks and Changes of the Cards, &c., &c. to Which is Added, a Complete System of Pyrotechny; Or, the Art of Making Fire-works.Unknown
Science
Endless Amusement: A Collection of Nearly 400 Entertaining Experiments in Various Branches of Science; Including Acoustics, Electricity, Magnetism, Arithmetic, Hydraulics, Mechanics, Chemistry, Hydrostatics, Optics; Wonders of the Air-Pump; All the Popular Tricks and Changes of the Cards, &c., &c. to Which is Added, a Complete System of Pyrotechny; Or, the Art of Making Fire-works.
Take one ounce of red lead, and half a drachm of charcoal in powder,
incorporate them well in a mortar, and then fill the bowl of a
tobacco-pipe with the mixture. Submit it to an intense heat, in a
common fire, and when melted, pour it out upon a slab, and the result
will be metallic lead completely revived.
_To diversify the Colours of Flowers._
Fill a vessel of what size or shape you please, with good rich earth,
which has been dried and sifted in the sun, then plant in the same a
slip or branch of a plant bearing a white flower, (for such only can
be tinged,) and use no other water to water it with, but such as is
tinged with red, if you desire red flowers; with blue, if blue
flowers, &c. With this coloured water, water the plant twice a day,
morning and evening, and remove it into the house at night, so that it
drink not of the morning or evening dew for three weeks. You will then
experience, that it will produce flowers, not altogether tinctured
with that colour wherewith you watered it, but partly with that, and
partly with the natural.
_How far Sound travels in a Minute._
However it may be with regard to the theories of sound, experience has
taught us, that it travels at about the rate of 1142 feet in a second,
or nearly thirteen miles in a minute. The method of calculating its
progress is easily made known: when a gun is discharged at a distance,
we see the fire long before we hear the sound; if, then, we know the
distance of the place, and know the time of the interval between our
first seeing the fire, and then hearing the report, this will show us
exactly the time the sound has been travelling to us. For instance, if
the gun be discharged a mile off, the moment the flash is seen I take
a watch and count the seconds till I hear the sound; the number of
seconds is the time the sound has been travelling a mile.
_Easy Method of making a Rain Gauge._
A very simple rain gauge, and one which will answer all practical
purposes, consists of a copper funnel the area of whose opening is
exactly ten square inches: this funnel is fixed in a bottle, and the
quantity of rain caught is ascertained by multiplying the weight in
ounces by 173, which gives the depth in inches and parts of an inch.
In fixing these gauges, care must be taken that the rain may have free
access to them: hence the tops of buildings are usually the best
places. When the quantities of rain collected in them at different
places are compared, the instruments ought to be fixed at the same
heights above the ground at both places, because at different heights
the quantities are always different, even at the same place.
_To make beautiful Transparent coloured Water._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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