Part 30

The oldest known metals in the world are gold and silver, copper, iron, tin and lead. They are to-day still the most useful and widely-used metals. Some of the properties by which we distinguish metals are the following: They are solid and not transparent; they have luster and are heavy. Mercury is an exception to the rule; it is a liquid, though yet a metal, and there is another, sodium, which is solid, though very light.

What Is the Most Valuable Metal?

If you were guessing you would naturally say that gold is, of course, the most valuable of the metals. But you would be wrong. The proper answer to this is iron. We do not mean the pound for pound value, for you could get much more for a pound of gold than for a pound of iron. We mean in useful value--iron is in that sense the most valuable metal known to man. This is true because iron is of such great service to man in so many ways, and it is very fortunate that there is such a great amount of it available for man’s purposes. Iron is not generally found in a pure state in the mines. It is generally found compounded with carbon and other substances, and we obtain pure iron by burning these other substances out of the compound.

Iron is put upon the market in three forms, which differ very much in their properties. First, there is cast-iron. Iron in this form is hard, easily fusible and quite brittle, as you will know if you ever broke a lid on the kitchen range. In the form of cast-iron it cannot be forged or welded.

Next comes wrought-iron, which is quite soft, can be hammered out flat or drawn out in the form of a wire and can be welded, but fusible only at a high temperature. Third comes steel, the most wonderful thing we produce with iron. It is also malleable, which means that it is capable of being hammered out flat and can easily be welded, and this is the great property of steel--it acquires when tempered a very high degree of hardness, so that a sharp edge can be put on it, and when in that shape it will easily cut wrought-iron. Ordinarily we make wrought-iron and steel from iron that has been changed from its original state to cast-iron.

The term cast-iron is generally given to iron which has been melted and cast in any form desired for use. Stoves are made in this way. The iron is melted and then poured into a mold; while the product out of which wrought-iron and steel are made is technically cast-iron, the term pig-iron is used in speaking of iron which is cast for this purpose.

The process by which pig-iron is changed into wrought-iron is called _puddling_. The object of puddling, which is done in what is called a reverberatory furnace (which is a furnace that reflects or drives back the flame or heat) is to remove the carbon which is in the pig-iron. This is done partly by the action of the oxygen of the air at high temperature and partly by the action of the cinder formed by the burning furnace. When this has been done the iron is made into balls of a size convenient for handling. These are “shingled” by squeezing or hammering and passed between rolls by which the iron is made to assume any desired form.

Now we come to steel, the most wonderful product or form in which we take advantage of the value of iron. Steel was formerly made from wrought-iron, so that you first had to get cast-iron, from which you made wrought-iron, and eventually got steel by changing the wrought-iron. Now we make steel direct from pig-iron. This is known as the Bessemer process.

The most noticeable feature in the chemical composition of the different grades of iron and steel is found in the percentages of carbon they contain. Pig-iron contains the most carbon; steel the next lowest, and wrought-iron the least.

Iron has been known to men from early historical times. The smelting of iron ores is not any indication of advanced civilization either. Savage tribes in many parts of the world practiced the art of smelting, even before they could have learned it from people who had become civilized.

Why Is Gold Called Precious?

Gold is called one of the precious metals because of its beautiful color, its luster, and the fact that it does not rust or tarnish when exposed to the air. It is the most ductile (can be stretched out into the thinnest wire), and is also the most malleable (can be hammered out into the thinnest sheet). It can be hammered into leaves so thin that light will pass through them. Pure gold is so soft that it cannot be used in that form in making gold coins or in making jewelry. Other substances, generally copper, are added to it to make the gold coins and jewelry hard. Sometimes silver is also added to the gold with copper. The gold coins of the United States are made of nine parts of gold to one of copper. The coins of France are the same, while the coins of England are made of eleven parts of gold to one of copper. The gold used for jewels and watch-cases varies from eight or nine to eighteen carats fine.

Another reason why gold is called a precious metal is that it is very difficult to dissolve it. None of the acids alone will dissolve gold, and only two of them when mixed together will do so. These are nitric acid and hydrochloric acid. When these two acids are mixed and gold put into the mixture the gold will disappear.

What Do We Mean By 18-Carat Fine?

We often hear people in speaking of their watches say, “It is an 18-carat case.” Others speak of 14-carat watches or 22-carat or solid-gold rings.

When you see the marks on a watch-case or the inside of a gold ring they read 18 K or 14 K, or whatever number of carats the maker wishes to indicate. A piece of gold jewelry marked 18 K or 18 carats means that it is three-fourths pure gold. In arranging this basis of marking things made of gold, absolutely pure gold is called 24 carats. Then if two, six or ten twenty-fourths of alloy has been added, the amount of the alloy is deducted from twenty-four, and the result is either 22, 18 or 14 carats fine, and so on. On ordinary articles made by jewelers the amount of pure gold used is seldom over 18 carats, or three-fourths. Weddings rings (and these are considered solid gold) are generally made 22 carats fine, that is, there are only two twenty-fourth parts of alloy in them.

Why Does Silver Tarnish?

Silver is a remarkably white metal, which is associated with gold as one of the precious metals. It is harder than gold and will not rust, although it will tarnish, which gold will not, when exposed to certain kinds of air.

The silver tarnishes when it is exposed to any kind of air that has sulphur mixed in it. It ranks below gold as a precious metal for use in making ornaments and is not so costly, because there is a great deal more of it to be found in the world.

While silver is somewhat harder than gold, it is still not sufficiently hard to use pure for making coins, so, as in the case of the gold coins, it is mixed with something else--copper--to harden it. Otherwise our dimes and quarters would wear out too rapidly. Our silver coins are made of nine parts of silver to one of copper. The coins of France are in the same proportion, while the silver coins of England are made of 92¹⁄₂ parts of silver to 7¹⁄₂ parts of copper. German silver coins are made of three parts of silver and one of copper.

Why Do We Use Copper Telegraph Wires?

One of the characteristics which distinguishes copper is its color--a peculiar red. It stands next to gold and silver in ductility and malleability, and comes next to iron and steel in tenacity--which means the ability of its tiny particles to hang on to each other. That is why copper wire bends instead of breaking when you twist it. But that is not the only reason, although an important part of the reason, why we use copper for telegraph wires. Copper is an extremely good conductor of electricity when it is pure. So are gold and silver, but we cannot afford to buy gold and silver wires for the telegraph, telephone and other wires, and if we used such wires the cost of the equipment would be so great that we could not afford to have telephones in our homes. But there is a great deal of copper in the world and it is very cheap, and so it makes an ideal element for use in things through which electricity is to pass. When you compound it with other substances it loses some of its conductivity. Copper is used extensively in many ways in the world. This book is printed, for instance, from copper electrotype plates. The whole business of electrotyping is based on the use of copper.

Why Is Lead So Heavy?

Lead is a white metal and is noted for its softness and durability. It has a luster when freshly cut, but becomes dull quite soon after the freshly-cut surface is exposed to the air. Lead is the softest metal in general use. It can be cut with an ordinary knife. It can be rolled out into thin sheets, but cannot be drawn out into wire.

Lead is a very dense metal, that is, its particles are very compact and there is no room for air to circulate in between these particles. A piece of wood is lighter than a piece of lead of exactly equal bulk, because the little particles which make up the piece of wood are not very close together, and there is a lot of air in the ordinary piece of wood, while this is not true of the lead.

A great deal of lead is used in making pipes for plumbing. This is because lead pipe is comparatively cheap, although you might not think so when you think of the general conclusions we have been brought to form about plumbers and everything connected with them. Lead pipe is easily bent in any direction also, and is particularly good for use in plumbing for that reason.

Another wide use of lead is in making paints--white lead being the base used in making oil paints. The process of making white lead for paint is quite interesting and pictures of it are shown in “The Story In a Can of Paint” in another part of “The Book of Wonders.”

Why Are Cooking Utensils Made of Tin?

Tin is the least important of the six useful metals. It is also inferior in many ways to the others in this group of elements, but is tougher than lead and will make a better wire, though not a really good one. It has a whiteness and a luster that are not tarnished by ordinary temperature and is cheap. That is why it is used in making cooking utensils, pans, etc., and for roofs. But the pans, roofs, etc., are not pure tin. They are thin sheets of iron coated with tin. Pure tin would not be strong enough for these purposes, so a sheet of iron is first taken to supply the strength and then covered with tin to improve the appearance of the tin pans and keep them from rusting rapidly.

What Is Gravitation?

Gravitation is the result of the attraction which every body, no matter what its size, has for every other body. It is a strange force and difficult to explain in plain words. It is what keeps the heavenly bodies in their paths. Every one of the planets is held in its path by gravitation and every object on each of the planets is kept on the planet by gravitation. We can come nearer understanding gravitation by studying the effect of the attraction of gravitation on our own earth and the objects on it. When you throw a ball or a stone into the air it is the attraction of gravitation that causes it to come back. If this were not so the stone would go on up and up and would keep on going forever. If it were not for this wonderful force you could jump into the air and just keep on going up with nothing to bring you back. The reason you do not pull the earth toward you is because the body or mass with the greater bulk has always the greater pulling power.

This is a wonderful force. It cannot be produced nor can it be destroyed or lessened. It just is. It acts between all pairs of bodies. If other bodies come between any pair of bodies the attraction of gravity between the two outside bodies is neither lessened or increased, and yet each of the outside bodies will have an independent attraction or pull on the body which is in between.

No particle of time is spent by the transmission of the force of gravity from one body to another, no matter how far apart they may be. The only effect that distance has on the attraction of gravitation is to lessen its force. Any body which is being pulled through gravity toward another body would fall toward the center of the attracting body if all the force of attraction from all other bodies were removed.

What Is Specific Gravity?

Specific gravity is the ratio of weight of a given bulk of any substance to that of a standard substance. The substances taken as the standard for solids and liquids is water, and air or hydrogen for gases. Since the weights of different bodies are in proportion to their masses, it follows that the specific gravity of any body is the same as its density, and we now generally use the term “density” instead of specific gravity.

To find, for instance, the specific gravity of a given bulk of silver, we must take an equal bulk of water and weigh it. Then we also weigh the silver. We find that the silver weighs ten and a half times as much as the water, and so the specific gravity of silver is 10.5. If you will bear in mind that water is the standard used for measuring the specific gravity of solids and liquids, and that air or hydrogen are used as standards for the gases, you will always know what the figures after the words specific gravity mean.

Why Do We See Stars When Hit On the Eye?

We do not really see stars, of course, when we are hit on the eye or when we fall in such a way as to bump the front of our heads. What we do see, or think we see, is light.

To understand this we must go back to the explanation of the five senses--sight, hearing, feeling, tasting and touching. Now, each of these senses has a special set of nerves through which the sensations received by each of the senses is communicated to the brain and, as a rule, these special nerves receive no sensations excepting those which occur in their own particular field of usefulness. The eye then has nerves of vision; the nose, nerves of smell; the ear, nerves of hearing; the mouth, nerves of taste, and the entire body nerves of touch. As we have seen then, these special nerves are susceptible of receiving impressions or sensations only in their particular field. But, if you should be able to rouse the nerves of smell in an entirely artificial way and give them a sensation, they might easily act very much as though they smelled something. We find this often in the nerves of touch when we think we feel something when we do not.

Now, when some one hits you in the eye, the nerves of vision are disturbed in such a way as to produce upon the brain the sensation of seeing light. In other words, you cannot affect the eye nerves without causing the sensation of light, and that is just what happens when some one hits you in the eye.

[Illustration: “ARGONAUT, JUNIOR.”

Experimental Boat, 1894.]

[Illustration: “ARGONAUT THE FIRST.”

Built 1896-1897.]

The Story in a Submarine Boat

How Can a Ship Sail Under Water?

Up to a few years ago the stories we could tell about the ships that sail beneath the water were the creations of the minds of writers of fiction, like the author of “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” but to-day we can read of many actual trips beneath the water by the brave men who man our submarines. We never dreamed that the great story of Jules Verne would be realized in the little but very destructive ships of war which can be seen to-day in the naval ports of the nations of the world.

We might have had these submarines long ago but for the fact that the men who were trying to invent them would not give up the secrets which they had discovered. Many men in different parts of the world worked on this problem and each discovered one or more things which were valuable in working out a solution, and if they had all gotten together and compared notes between them they could have produced a submarine boat almost as good as those we have to-day.

How Does the Submarine Get Down Under the Surface?

The first essential in a vessel to enable it to navigate below the surface of the water is that it be made sufficiently strong to withstand the surrounding pressure of water, which increases at the rate of .43 of a pound for each foot of submergence.

A boat navigating at a depth of 100 feet would therefore have 43 pounds pressure per square inch of surface, or 6192 pounds for every square foot of surface. It will readily be seen, therefore, that the first essential is great strength. Therefore, the submarine boats are usually built circular in cross section with steel plating riveted to heavy framing, as that is the best form to resist external pressure. These boats are built for surface navigation as well, therefore they have a certain amount of buoyancy when navigating on the surface, the same as an ordinary surface vessel. When it is desired to submerge the vessel this buoyancy must be destroyed, so that the vessel will sink under the surface.

Now, the submerged displacement of a submarine vessel is its total volume, and, theoretically, a vessel may be put in equilibrium with the water which it displaces by admitting water ballast into compartments contained within the hull of the vessel, therefore, if a vessel whose total displacement submerged was 100 tons, the vessel and contents must weigh also 100 tons. If it weighed one ounce more than 100 tons it would sink to the bottom. If it weighed one ounce less than 100 tons it would float on the surface with a buoyancy of one ounce. If it weighed exactly 100 tons it would be in what submarine designers specify as being “in perfect equilibrium.”

It is possible to give a vessel a slight negative buoyancy to cause her to sink to, say, a depth of 50 feet and then pump out sufficient water to give her a perfect equilibrium, and thus cause her to remain at a fixed depth while at rest. In practice, however, this is seldom done. Most submarine boats navigate under the water with a positive buoyancy of from 200 to 1000 pounds and are either steered at the depth desired by a horizontal rudder placed in the stern of the vessel, or are held to the depth by hydroplanes, which hydroplanes correspond to the fins of a fish. They are flat, plane surfaces, extending out from either side of the vessel, and when the vessel has headway, if the forward ends of these planes are inclined downward, the resistance of the water acting upon the planes is sufficient to overcome the reserve of buoyancy and holds the vessel to the desired depth. If the vessel’s propeller is stopped, the boat, having positive buoyancy, will come to the surface.

By manipulating either the stern rudders or the hydroplanes, the vessel may be readily caused to either come nearer to the surface or go to a greater depth, as the change of angle will give a greater or less downpull to overcome the reserve of buoyancy.

The above description applies to navigating a vessel when between the surface of the water and the bottom.

Another type of vessel which is used for searching the bottom in locating wrecks, obtaining pearls, sponges, or shellfish, is provided with wheels. In this type of vessel the boat is given a slight negative buoyancy, sufficient to keep it on the bottom, and it is then propelled over the water bed on wheels, the same as an automobile is propelled about the streets. This type of vessel is also provided with a diver’s compartment, which is a compartment with a door opening outward from the bottom. If the operators in the boat wish to inspect the bottom, they go into this compartment and turn compressed air into the compartment until the air pressure equals the water pressure outside of the boat; i. e., if they were submerged at a depth of 100 feet they would introduce an air pressure of 43 pounds per square inch into the diving compartment. The door could then be opened and no water could come into the compartment, as the diving compartment would be virtually a diving bell. Divers can then readily leave the boat by putting on a diving suit and stepping out upon the bottom.

[Illustration: ONE OF THE FIRST PRACTICAL SUBMARINES

“PROTECTOR.” BUILT 1901-1902, BRIDGEPORT, CONN.

This was the pioneer Submarine Torpedo Boat of the level-keel type, and was built in Bridgeport in 1901-1902. It was shipped to St. Petersburg, Russia, during the Russian-Japanese war. From St. Petersburg it was shipped to Vladivostok, 6000 miles across Siberia, special cars being built for its transport.]

[Illustration: This picture illustrates the same vessel, also at full speed under engines, with the conning-tower entirely awash and with the sighting-hood and the Omniscope alone above water. Notwithstanding the limited areas exposed above the surface, still observation could be had well-nigh continuously either through the dead-lights in the sighting-hood or by means of the Omniscope.

In neither condition is it necessary to have recourse to electrical propulsion--the boats can still be safely and speedily driven as here shown under their engines.]

[Illustration: THE INSIDE OF A SUBMARINE

THE “G-1” RECENTLY DELIVERED TO THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT.

The largest, fastest submarine in the United States and the most powerfully armed submarine torpedo boat in the world.

In addition to the usual fixed torpedo tubes arranged in the bow of the vessel, which requires the vessel herself to be trained, the (seal) “G-1” carries four torpedo tubes on her deck which may be trained while the vessel is submerged, in the same manner as a deck gun on a surface vessel is trained, and thus fired to either broadside, which gives many technical advantages.]

[Illustration: The above view gives a general idea of the interior of a submarine torpedo boat and the method of operation when running entirely submerged with periscope only above the surface.