Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1892 — POPULAR SCIENCE NOTES. [ARTICLE]

POPULAR SCIENCE NOTES.

Sciontists have estimated that every year a layer equal to fourteen feet of the entire surface of all oceans and other waters is taken up into the atmosphere in the shape ot vapor, to fall us ruin and again flow back into the seas. Bricks made of plate glass are of very superior quality. A sand of iron and glass is forged into a mold under several thousand pounds pressure; it is then subjected to extremely high heat, which causes glass and sand (irmly to unite. The bricks are perfectly white, and will stand both frost and acid. The new bridgo in Paris, called the Pont Mirabeau, is to be constructed somewhat on the cantulever principle, since it will rest upon two piers and meet in the centre. Its stability however, will depend upon an adjustment of weight like that of a huge crane. The long arm meeting in the centre will be of light construction, and to compensate for its weight the short arm received by the abutment will be especially heavy. Herr Weismann, a distinguished German biologist bus pointed out that the average duration of the life of birds is by no means well known. Small singing birds live from 8 to 18 years. Ravens have lived for 100 years and parrots still linger in captivity. Fowls live from 10 to 30 years, while the wild goose lives over too years. The long life of birds has been regarded as compensation for their lack of fertility and the great mortality of their young.

Official Time.— Notwithstanding the* fact that standard time has been adopted almost everywhere in the United States for the last seven years, there still remain some cities who subject themselves to the iqfonvenieuce of a double standard. Among these was Augusta, Ga., which, however, on March 1, formally adopted eastern time as its standard. There are now but {wo places of uny importance in tlia Union, says the Railway Guide, where mean solar time, or as it is popularly called, “sun time” is used. In both of them attempts have" been made to adopt stundard time, but the conservative spirit has been too strong and has brought about a return to the old state of affairs. In one case the effort was made in the winter when the days were short, and the difference in the hours of daylight soon made itself apparent and the attempt to readjust the working hours was a failure. If, however, a trial should be made during the spring and summer it is doubtful whether any one would be sensible that the change had taken place. Both of the towns referred to are on the line of railways leading to Chicago and it is to be hoped that they will try to bring about the reform before the opening of the Columbian exposition, otherwise they may figure in the eyes of the visiting foreigners as the only cities in the United States whose inhabitants still use the system in vogue in the days of Christopher Columbus. Diameter of a Thunderbolt. —“ Did you ever see the diameter of a lightning flash measured!”, asked a geologist. “Well, here is the case which once inclosed a flash of lightning, fitting it exactly, so that you can just see how big it was. This is called a ‘fulgurite,’ or ‘lightning hole,’ and the material it is made of is glass. I will tell you how it was manufactured, though it took only a fraction of a second to turn it out. When a bolt of lightning strikes a bed of sand it plunges downward "into the sand a distance, less or greater, transforming simultaneously into glass the silica in the material through which it passes. Thus, bv its great heat,*it forms at once a glass

tnbe of precisely its own size. Now otd then such a tube, known as a ‘fulgurite,’ is found and dug up. Fulgurites have been followed into the sand by excavations for nearly thirty feet. ■ They vary in interior diameter from the size of a quill of three inchos or more according to the bore of the flash. But fulgurites are not alone produced in sand; they are found also in solid rocks, though very naturally of dight depth, and frequently exisiug merely as a thin glassy coating on the surface. Such fulgurites occur in astonishing abundance on the summit of Little Ararat in Armenia. The rock is soft and so porous that blocks a foot long can be obtained, perforated in all directions by little tubes filled with bottle-green glass formed from-the fused rock. There is a small specimen in the National Museum which has the appearance of having been bored by the torpedo, the holes made by the worm subsequently filled with glass. I tin indebted to the Washington Star for the foregoing accounts. I may add that Charles Darwin mentions these fulgurites in his book of travels, and Humboldt found some on the high Nevada de Zoiuco, Humboldt ascended this precipitous peak at the risk of his life. ”