Jasper County Democrat, Volume 18, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 June 1915 — Radium Used to Promote Plant Growth. [ARTICLE]

Radium Used to Promote Plant Growth.

Some of the remarkable properties' of radium ire being demonstrated by an exhibitor in the Liberal Arts build ing at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, in conj nection with a new invention making possible the radiofying of water tor | medicinal purposes. Demonstrating the power of this ; mineral promoting metabolism a number of young plants, some existing I with and some without the aid of ra- | dium, are shown. These in the radioactive soils are seen to De growing much more rapidly than those in comj mon soil, and to have a more healthy appearance. This inventor has found a process of impregnating terracotta bricks with radium-bearing minerals, and these small bricks placed in water are said to give it remarkable curative properties. The porous bricks last almost indefinitely, losing only half their potency, it is estimated, in 1,800 years. Since the discovery of this mineral it has been found that many celebrated i waters, as Carlsbad and Baden Baden, owe their health-giving properties to raj dium. The inventor claims that his I process produces in ordinary waters j the qualities of these famous springs. The radium ore used in the manufacture of radioactive terracotta is known as camotite, a formation found mainly in Colorado and Utah, and now producing three-fourths of the world's radium. The European mineral, known as pitchblende, from j which the famous European springs are impregnated, is also displayed I ;• Most Rapid Photographs Ever Taken. The most remarkable set of speed photographs ever taken are a part of i the war department’s exhibit in Maj chinery Hall at the Panama-Pacific Inj ternational Exposition, San Francisco. They are pictures of a shell from a 12inch coast defense gun in flight, the set including the various phases of the flight beginning just as the great projectile pokes its nose out of the muzzle of the gun. The pictures were taken with a lens having an exposure period of one five-thousandth of a second, this being the fastest shutter ever manu- | factured. The exposure at the proper time in the flight of the projectile 1 was made by breaking an electric ciri cuit in a wire stretched across the trajectory at the desired point and connecting with the shutter. One picture shows the shell halfway out of the muzzle before any smoke and gas has escaped. Another was taken when the shell was two feet from the muzzle but hidden by a heavy ring of smoke. A third shows the shell in flight a hundred feet from the muzzle. The photographs are so perfect and the exposure so rapid that scarcely any blur is perceptible, They were taken at Fortress Monroe, Va-, under the direction of Capt- F. J. Bchl of the coast artillery corps and head of the department of enlisted specialists at the Coast Artillery school at Fortress Monroe.