Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 February 1890 — Lighting a Pipe with Ice. [ARTICLE]

Lighting a Pipe with Ice.

Last winter quite a little excitement was caused among a party of skaters on the Serpentine river, England, by one of the party making a lens of ice and lighting the pipes of the others. This reminds the writer, says the St Louis Republic, that this curious experiment was first brought before the public by Dr. Scoresby, who, when in the polar regions, to the great astonishment of his comp inions, who did not understand why the ice did not freeze the solar rays, performed the same remarkable feat It may also be worthy of remark that Prof. Tyndall when a tutor in the Royal institution, on several occasions set tire to little heaps of gunpowder with rays from an electric arc concentrated on the powder by a lens of ico. His explanation was that although ice absorbs rays of certain waves of light and is gradually melted thereby, other waves do not absorb, ' and these latter produce the beating effect at the focus of the lens. It is wholly a question of the relative motions of the molecules of frozen water and the motions of the waves of light