Popular Scientific Recreations: in Natural Philosphy, Astronomy, Geology, Chemistry, etc., etc., etc.Tissandier, Gaston
Science
Popular Scientific Recreations: in Natural Philosphy, Astronomy, Geology, Chemistry, etc., etc., etc.
Tissandier, Gaston
Scientific recreations
The second method is not so simple. A short tube of tin, blackened on
the inside, and supported upright, has an opening on one side, and
opposite this, inside the tube, is a mirror placed at an angle of 45°.
“By placing a lighted candle at a known distance opposite the opening,
its light is reflected in the mirror and thrown upward through the
tube. On top of the tube is placed a round vessel of glass or metal,
closed at the bottom by a sheet of clear glass. The vessel is closed at
the top by a cover having an opening in the centre, in which slides up
and down a small tube closed at the bottom with glass, and having an
eye-piece at the top. The milk to be tested is placed in this vessel on
the top of the tin tube, so that the light of the candle reflected from
the mirror passes upward through the milk. Then, by looking through the
sliding tube and moving it up and down, a point may be found where the
image of the candle in the mirror can be seen through the milk. This
device depends, as will be seen, on observing the light transmitted
through a film of milk, and the thickness of the film is the measure of
the value of the milk. The movable tube contains a graduated scale, and
by comparison of this with a printed table, the percentage of butter in
the milk may be ascertained.”
In concluding this chapter we give a few hints for some pleasant
relaxation for young people, which has many a time created amusement.
The experiment consists in cutting out in paper or cardboard certain
portions of a face or figure, as per the illustration herewith. Fig.
167 gives the card as cut with the scissors, and the two subsequent
faces are the result of the same held at a less or greater distance
from a screen. The illustrations (fig. 168) will assist those who wish
to amuse children by making rabbits, etc., on the wall. The shadows
will be seen perfectly thrown if the hands be carefully fixed near a
good light.
[Illustration: Fig. 168.—Hand-shadows on the wall.]
We are all so familiar with the “Magic Lantern,” and the apparatus
for dissolving views by an arrangement of lenses and manipulation of
slides, that we need do no more than refer to them.
[Illustration: Fig. 169.—Dissolving views apparatus.]
The various ghost illusions, etc., produced by indirect mirrors, have
already been referred to, the ghost being merely the reflection of an
individual seen through a sheet of glass between the spectators and
the stage. The strong light throws a reflection from a parallel mirror
lower down, and this reflected image can be made to appear amongst
the real actors who are behind the plate-glass in full view of the
audience, who are, however, ignorant of the existence of the glass
screen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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