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.
This water will shine in the dark for several months, even without
being touched; and, if it be shaken in dry warm weather, brilliant
flashes will be seen to rise through the middle of the water.
_Luminous Liquor._
Put a little phosphorus, with essence of cloves, into a bottle, which
must be kept closely stopped. Every time the bottle is unclosed, the
liquor will appear luminous. This experiment must be performed in the
dark.
_The changeable Rose._
Take a common full-blown rose, and, having thrown a little sulphur
finely pounded into a chafing-dish with coals, expose the rose to the
vapour. By this process the rose will become whitish; but if it be
afterwards held some time in water, it will resume its former colour.
_Golden Ink._
Take some white gum arabic, reduce it to an impalpable powder, in a
brass mortar; dissolve it in strong brandy, and add a little common
water to render it more liquid. Provide some gold in a shell, which
must be detached, in order to reduce it to a powder. When this is
done, moisten it with the gummy solution, and stir the whole with a
small hair-brush, or your finger; then leave it for a night, that the
gold may be better dissolved. If the composition become dry during the
night, dilute it with more gum water, in which a little saffron has
been infused; but take care that the gold solution be sufficiently
liquid to flow freely in a pen. When the writing is dry, polish it
with a dry tooth.
_Another way._
Reduce gum ammoniac into powder, and dissolve it in gum arabic water,
to which a little garlic juice has been added. This water will not
dissolve the ammonia so as to form a transparent liquid; for the
result will be a milky liquor. With the liquor form your letters or
ornaments on paper or vellum, with a pen or fine camels'-hair brush;
then let them dry, and afterwards breathe on them some time, till they
become moist; then apply a few bits of leaf gold to the letters, which
you press down gently with cotton wool. When the whole is dry, brush
off the superfluous gold with a large camels'-hair brush, and, to make
it more brilliant, burnish with a dog's tooth.
_White Ink, for Writing on black Paper._
Having carefully washed some egg-shells, remove the internal skin, and
grind them on a piece of porphyry. Then put the powder into a small
vessel of pure water, and when it has settled at the bottom, draw off
the water, and dry the powder in the sun. This powder must be
preserved in a bottle; when you want to use it, put a small quantity
of gum ammoniac into distilled vinegar, and leave it to dissolve
during the night. Next morning the solution will appear exceedingly
white; and if you then strain it through a piece of linen cloth, and
add to it the powder of egg-shells, in sufficient quantity, you will
obtain a very white ink.
_To construct Paper Balloons._
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