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.
Put three ounces of rock alum, and one ounce of honey or sugar, into a
new earthen dish, glazed, and which is capable of standing a strong
heat; keep the mixture over the fire, stirring it continually till it
becomes very dry and hard; then remove it from the fire, and pound it
to a coarse powder. Put this powder into a long-necked bottle, leaving
a part of the vessel empty; and, having placed it in a crucible, fill
up the crucible with fine sand, and surround it with burning coals.
When the bottle has been kept at a red heat for about seven or eight
minutes, and no more vapour issues from it, remove it from the fire,
then stop it with a piece of cork; and, having suffered it to cool,
preserve the mixture in small bottles well closed.
If you unclose one of these bottles, and let fall a few grains of this
powder on a bit of paper, or any other very dry substance, it will
first become blue, then brown, and will at last burn the paper or
other dry substance on which it has fallen.
_Fulminating Gold._
Put into a small long-necked bottle, resting on a little sand, one
part of fine gold filings, and three parts of aqua regia,
(nitro-muriatic acid.) When the gold is dissolved, pour the solution
into a glass, and add five or six times the quantity of water. Then
take spirit of sal ammoniac or oil of tartar, and pour it drop by drop
into the solution, until the gold is entirely precipitated to the
bottom of the glass. Decant the liquor that swims at the top, by
inclining the glass; and, having washed it several times in warm
water, dry it at a moderate heat, placing it on paper capable of
absorbing all the moisture.
If a grain of this powder, put into a spoon, (it should be an iron
one,) be exposed to the flame of a candle, it will explode with a very
loud report.
_To melt a piece of Money in a Walnut-shell, without injuring the
shell._
Bend any thin coin, and put it into half a walnut-shell; place the
shell on a little sand, to keep it steady. Then fill the shell with a
mixture made of three parts of very dry pounded nitre, one part of
flowers of sulphur, and a little saw-dust well sifted. If you then set
light to the mixture, you will find, when it is melted, that the metal
will also be melted at the bottom of the shell, in form of a button,
which will become hard when the burning matter round it is consumed:
the shell will have sustained very little injury.
_A Liquid that Shines in the Dark._
Take a bit of phosphorus, about the size of a pea; break it into small
parts, which you are to put into a glass half full of very pure water,
and boil it in a small earthen vessel, over a very moderate fire. Have
in readiness a long narrow bottle, with a well-fitted glass stopper,
and immerse it, with its mouth open, into boiling water. On taking it
out, empty the water, and immediately pour in the mixture in a boiling
state; then put in the stopper, and cover it with mastich, to prevent
the entrance of the external air.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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