Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 March 1881 — Boiling Water on Paper. [ARTICLE]

Boiling Water on Paper.

The following experiments for boiling water and melting lead on a sheet ot paper are given in Nature. Take a piece of paper and fold it up, as schoolboys do, in a square box without a lid. Hang this up to a walking stick by four threads, and support the stick upon books or othefconvenient props. Then a lamp or taper must be placed under the dainty caldron. In a few minutes the water will boil. The only fear is lest the threads should catch fire and let the water soill into the lamp and over the table. The flame must, therfore, not be too large. The paper does not burn, because it is wet: and if it resisted the wet it still would not burn through, because the heat imparted to it on one side by the flame would be very rapidly conducted away by the water on the other. Another experiment of a similar nature, but perhaps even more striking, is as follows: Twist up the edges of a common playing card, or other bit of cardbo&ra, so as to feshion it into a light tray. On tills tray place layer of small shot or bits of lead and heat it over the flame of a lamp. The lead will melt, but the card will not burn. It may be charred a little round the edges, but immediately below the lead }t Will not be burned, for here again the lead conducts off the heat on one .ideas fast as it is supplied op the o th® r -