Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 January 1890 — SCIENCE NOTES. [ARTICLE]

SCIENCE NOTES.

In a recent trial with armor plates of English and French make, held in Holland, the former came out victorious. There is said to be a spot in Siberia about thirty miles square where the ground has not thawed out for the last hundred .years, and. where it is frozen to a depth of sixty feet. A Nuremburg manufacturer has invented pencils in blue, black and brown, for writing on the human; They are for use in anatomical and chemical demonstrations. A shell, making a prodigious noise as it passes through the air, not unlike the noise made by a foghorn, has lately been introduced in France, the object being to stampede the enemy’s cavalry and artilery. For a cement for fastening wood to stone, melt together four pints of pitch jnd one pint of wax, and add four parts of pounded brickdust or chalk. It must be warmed before using and applied thinly to the surfaces to be joined. A mortar which, it is claimed will stand in all sorts of weather, is made of one bushel of unslaked lime and three bushels of sharp san 1, to which is added one pound of alum mixed with one pint of linseed oil. The alum will counteract the action of frost on the mortar. A company has just star Led in NewT York city for supplying cold air to the TiTftchers of Washington Market The supply is regulated by a clock. The The air is cooled by the ammonia system, and its temperature enables the butchers to dispense with the ice into which they formerly put their meat Some one asks what is the difference between electricity generated by chemical process and that generated by friction, magnets and otherwise? The answer given is that the difference consists in tension or potential; fric- ' tional electricity has very high tension compared with that generated by a battery. In the present phonograph, a stylus for impressing the wax is attached tc the center of the vibrating diaphragm. The new improvement of G. Bettini is - to extend little rods from the stylus te j several parts of the diaphragm. In this way greater exactness of tone and speech is obtained, so the inventor i claims, and much superior results.