Part 39

Hydrogen is one of the elementary substances in the form of a gas. It has no color or taste or odor, so we can neither see, smell nor taste it. It is the lightest substance known to the world. We have by the aid of chemistry been able to catch and retain it in sufficient quantities to weigh it and have found it to be lighter than anything else in the world. It is soluble in water and some other liquids, but only slightly so. It refracts light very strongly and will absorb in a very remarkable manner with some metals when they are heated. It burns with a beautiful blue flame and very great heat. When burned it combines with oxygen in the air and forms water. Hydrogen is not poisonous but, if inhaled, it prevents the blood from securing oxygen, and so the inhaling of hydrogen will cause death. Hydrogen is not found free in the air except in small quantities like oxygen and nitrogen and is, therefore, secured by separating compounds by known methods. It can be secured by the action which diluted sulphuric acid has on zinc or iron, by passing steam through a red-hot tube filled with iron trimmings, by passing an electric current through water and in other ways. Hydrogen is absolutely necessary to every form of animal or vegetable structure. It is found in all acids.

What Is Oxygen?

Oxygen was discovered in 1774. It is an elementary substance in the form of a gas which is found free in the air. It is colorless, tasteless and odorless and, like hydrogen, cannot therefore be seen, tasted or smelled. It is soluble in water and combines very readily with most of the elements. In most cases when oxygen combines with other things the process of combining is so rapid that light and heat are produced--this combination is called combustion. Where the process of combining with other substances acts slowly the heat and light produced at one time are not enough to be noticed. Where metals tarnish or rust or animal or vegetable substances decay, the same thing chemically is taking place as when you light a fire and produce light or heat--you are making the oxygen combine with the substance in the material which is burning. When iron is rusting or vegetables decaying, the action is so slow that no heat or light is produced, but the result is the same if some outside force does not stop the action. The fire will burn until everything burnable which it can reach is burned out, and in the case of the piece of iron rusting, the action will go on slowly until the whole piece of iron is destroyed--or burned out. Like hydrogen, no vegetable or animal life can live without oxygen continually given it. Oxygen will destroy life and will sustain it.

All of our body heat and muscular energy are produced by slow combustion going on in all parts of the body, of oxygen carried in the blood after it enters the lungs. In sunlight oxygen is exhaled by growing plants.

Oxygen is the most widely distributed and abundant element in nature. It amounts to about one-fifth of the volume of the air belt of the earth; about ninety per cent of all the weight of water is oxygen. The rocks of the earth contain about fifty per cent of oxygen and it is found in most animal and vegetable products and in acids.

What Is Nitrogen?

Nitrogen is the third of the world’s wonderful and important gases. It is also without color, taste or smell. It will not burn or help other substances to burn and it will not combine easily with any other element. It will unite at a very high degree of heat with magnesium, silica, and other metals. About 7.7 per cent of the weight of the air is nitrogen, so that it is a very important part of the air we breathe and it is absolutely necessary in making all animal and vegetable tissues. When united with hydrogen, it produces ammonia, and with oxygen one of the most important acids--nitric acid. It is found free in the air and is thus easily secured. Nitrogen, while very important to all kinds of life, is known as the quiet gas. It stays quietly by itself unless forced to combine under great power with other things, and, even under those conditions, will combine rarely. We find a good deal of nitrogen in the blood but, while we need the nitrogen which is found in the blood, it does nothing particularly to the blood or the rest of the body. The nitrogen which the body uses is valuable to the body only when found in a compound. This nitrogen which the body needs is secured through vegetable products such as the wheat from which our bread is made, and which are said to secure their nitrogen through the aid of microbes which are able to force the nitrogen of the air into a compound. Some day perhaps we shall know all there is to know about nitrogen, which is the least known of these three wonderful and necessary gases.

Why Are Some Things Transparent and Others Not?

Transparency is produced by the way rays of light go through substances or not. When light strikes a substance that is almost perfectly transparent, it means that the rays of light go through it almost exactly as they come in. We think quickly of glass when we think of something readily transparent. Water is almost equally as transparent. When the sunlight is shining on one side of a pane of ordinary window glass, it causes every thing on that side of the window to reflect the light which strikes it in all directions. When these rays of light strike the window pane, they go right through and that is how we are able to see the trees and grass and everything else through a clear window pane. The same reason applies also to the water.

Some kinds of window glass (the frosted kind) we cannot see through--they are not transparent. The surface of a frosted window pane is so made that when the light rays strike it the rays are twisted and broken, and do not come through as they entered the glass.

Sometimes the water is almost perfectly transparent. When water is perfectly clear, it is quite transparent. When you look at or into water that is not transparent, you will know that there are particles of solid matter floating about in it which twist and mix the light rays. If the water is not too deep you can see the bottom sometimes even when there are some particles of solid substances floating about in it, but the deeper the water the more of these solid particles there are generally in it, so that it is impossible in most waters to see the bottom if the water is deep. In some places, however, the water is so free from floating particles that the bottom of the ocean can be seen at quite considerable depths.

Why Is the Sea Water Salt?

All water that comes into the oceans by way of the rivers and other streams contains salt. The amount is so very small for a given quantity of water that it cannot be tasted. But all this river water is poured into the oceans eventually at some point. After it reaches the oceans, the water is evaporated by the action of the sun. When the sun picks up the water in the form of moisture, it does not take up any of the solid substances which the water contained as it came in from the rivers, and while there is about as much water in the ocean all the time and about as much also in the air in the form of moisture also, the ocean never gets fuller; the solid substances from the river waters keep piling up in the ocean and float about in the water there. The salt which is in the river water has been left behind by the sun when it evaporated the water in the ocean for so long that the amount of salt has become very noticeable. The moisture which the sun takes into the air from the ocean is eventually turned back to the earth again in the form of rain. This process of evaporation and precipitation in the form of rain is going on all the time. When the water which is in the form of rain strikes the earth, it is pure water. It sinks into the ground and on the way picks up some salt, finds its way into a river sooner or later, and then evidently gets back into the ocean. All this time it has been carrying the tiny bit of salt which it picked up in going through the ground. But when it reaches the ocean again and is taken up by the sun, it leaves its salt behind and so the salt from countless drops of water is constantly being left in the ocean as it goes up into the air. This has been going on for countless ages and the amount of salt has been increasing in the ocean all the time, so that the sea is becoming saltier and saltier.

Why Does Salt Make Me Thirsty?

The blood in our body contains about the same proportion of salt as the water in the ocean normally. When the supply is normal we do not feel that we have too much salt in our systems, but when you take salt into your mouth the percentage of salt in the body is increased, and the being thirsty, or the desire to drink water afterwards is caused by the demand of the human system that the salt be diluted. The system calls for water or something to drink in order that it may counteract the too great percentage of salt in the system. Other things also, when taken into the body in too great a proportion, cause us to become thirsty. Thirst is merely nature’s demand for more water on account of the necessity of reducing the percentage of some substance like salt, or merely a necessity for having more water in the body.

What Are Diamonds Made Of?

We learned the definition of an element in our study of water and other substances. Many things which were at one time thought by our wisest men to be elements were later found to be compounds of other substances. Water is one of these which we have learned is really not an element at all, but compounded from two gaseous elements, hydrogen and oxygen.

One of the most important elements in the world is the one out of which diamonds are formed. Not because diamonds are so valuable, but because the element referred to, carbon, is found in every tissue of every living thing, both animal and mineral. This carbon is one of the most useful of all elements, but is found in and used by living things always in combination with some other substance. Carbon is combustible, forming carbonic acid gas, from which the earth’s vegetation secures its necessary carbon, which is very great in amount.

When heat is made to act in certain ways on the tissues of animal and vegetable life we get charcoal, lampblack and coke. Carbon will combine with more other substances than any of the other known elements. Its wonders lie in the fact that under various treatments it produces altogether different looking things, although remaining as pure carbon. Our diamonds, for instance, are pure carbon, but our lead pencils, that is, the part we write with, are also pure carbon, and the coal we burn is carbon also. It would be hard to say which of these three forms of pure carbon is most valuable to the world. A great many rich people might say diamonds, while the poor people would surely say coal, especially if you asked them in winter, while the people who write books, and newspaper reporters, would probably say lead-pencils. However, it would be better to choose diamonds, for if you have them you can always trade them for coal or lead-pencils. A very small diamond will buy quite a lot of either coal or lead-pencils. Carbon is one of the solid elements which are not metals. A great many of the important elements in the group of solids are metals.

What Causes Dimples?

A dimple is a dent or depression in the skin on a part of the body where the flesh is soft. The fibers which lay in the tissue under the outside skin help to hold the skin firm. These fibers which are, of course, small run in all directions and are of different lengths. Now and then these fibers will just happen to grow short in one spot or the other and pull the skin in, forming a little depression, but producing a very pleasing effect.

Why Does the Dark Cause Fear?

Fear is an instinct. We are by nature afraid of the things we do not know all about. That is why knowledge is so valuable; when we know about a thing we are sure of our ground. When we are where it is light we can see what is there; when it is dark our imagination becomes

## active and because we do not know for certain what is there in the dark

before us, we imagine things.

Fear of the dark, however, cannot be said to be entirely natural. It comes naturally only when we have come to the age when we begin to imagine things. Animals have no imaginative powers and they do not fear the dark. Some people say that the fear of the dark is bred in us, but little babies do not fear the dark. If they are properly trained they will go to sleep in the dark and will prefer the dark. As they grow older children begin to fear the dark, but that is because their imagination is coming to life and because parents so often make the mistake at this stage of training their children of either encouraging the feeling of fear that darkness brings for the convenient means of punishment it provides through threatening to put the light out, or because they do not take the pains to show that there is no reason for fear.

Most children who fear the darkness are really taught to do so permanently by parents or servants. When a boy or girl first begins to imagine things in the dark, many parents run quickly to the child and say, “Don’t be afraid” or “There is nothing to be afraid of,” and in doing this they perhaps mention the word “fear” for the first time. Repetition of this will always cause the child to associate the word “fear” with “darkness.” As a matter of fact when the boy or girl first shows fear of the darkness, parents should go to them and quiet their fears, but talk about anything else but fear and direct the child’s mind away from any thought of fear.

[Illustration: ANCIENT EGYPTIAN ROPE.]

The Story in a Coil of Rope

How many have ever given a thought to the question of where rope comes from and how it is made, or realize what a variety of uses it is put to, and how dependent we are upon it in many of the everyday affairs of life? But let us suppose for a moment that the world were suddenly deprived of its supply of this very commonplace material, and of its smaller relatives, cords and twine. We should then begin to realize the importance of a seemingly unimportant thing, and to appreciate the difficulty in getting along without it.

Ancient civilized peoples had their ropes and cordage, made from such materials as were available in their respective countries. The Egyptians are said to have made rope from leather thongs, and our illustration will be found interesting in this connection. This is from a sculpture taken from a tomb in Thebes of the time of the Pharaoh of the Exodus.

[Illustration: EGYPTIANS MAKING ROPE.]

While this scene is said by the best authority to represent the preparation of leather cords for use in lacing sandals, it has been supposed by some to be a representation of rope making. In any event the process is undoubtedly the same as that used in making rope.

The scene is depicted with the true Egyptian faculty for showing details, making words almost unnecessary to an understanding of their pictorial records. We see the raw material in the shape of the hide, and also two well-made coils of the finished product. One of the workmen is cutting a strand from a hide by revolving it and cutting as it turns. Any one who has not tried it will be surprised to see what a good, even string can be cut from a piece of leather in this way.

Another man is arranging and paying out the thongs to a third, who is evidently walking backward in time-honored fashion, twisting as he goes.

Coming down to more recent times we find that rope-making had been going on for centuries with probably very little change, up to the time of the introduction of machinery and the establishment of the factory system.

[Illustration: HACKLING.]

~HOW ROPE WAS LONG MADE BY HAND~

In the early days to which we have referred, all the yarn for rope-making was spun by hand in the time-honored way. We are able to represent to our readers by the photographs shown, this now almost lost art. The material shown in the pictures is American hemp, which because the earlier machines were not adapted to working this softer fiber, continued to be spun by hand long after manila was spun chiefly on machines.

[Illustration: NATIVE PHILIPINO SCRAPING THE FIBER FROM THE LEAF STOCK.]

The hemp was first hackled, as is also shown by our photograph, the hackle or “hechel” being simply a board having long, sharp steel teeth set into it. This combed out the tow or short, matted fiber, leaving the clean, straight hemp. This “strike” of hemp the spinner wrapped about his waist, bringing the ends around his back and tucking them into his belt, thus keeping the material in place without knot or twist, and allowing the fibers to pay out freely.

[Illustration: DRYING THE FIBER.]

[Illustration: SCENE IN AN EGYPTIAN KITCHEN SHOWING USE OF A LARGE ROPE TO SUPPORT A SORT OF HANGING SHELF.]

The workman in our picture is Johnny Moores, an old-time expert hand-spinner, who can walk off backward from the wheel with his wad of hemp, spinning with each hand a thread as fine and even as can be asked for. In the photograph, in order to show the process more clearly, one large yarn is being spun.

[Illustration: AN OLD FASHIONED ROPE WALK

HAND SPINNING.]

The large wheel, usually turned by a boy, is used to convey power to the “whirls,” or small spindles carrying hooks upon which the fiber is fastened. These whirls, revolving, give the twist to the yarn as the spinner deftly pays out the fiber, regulating it with skillful fingers to preserve the uniformity and proper size of the yarn. As he goes backward down the long walk through the “squares of sunlight on the floor” he throws the trailing yarns over the “stakes” placed at intervals along the walk for the purpose.

The spinning “grounds” were usually arranged with wheels at either end, so that spinners reaching the farther end, could go back to their starting point spinning another set of yarns.

Then in the case of small ropes, the strands could be made by attaching two or more yarns to the “whirl” and twisting them together, reversing the motion to give the strands a twist opposite to that given the yarns. These strands were twisted together, again reversing the motion, making a rope. Thus it will be seen that, reduced to its lowest terms, rope-making consists simply of a series of twisting processes. The twisting of the yarns into the strand is known as “forming” or putting in the “foreturn.” The final process is “laying,” “closing” or putting in the “after turn.” Horse-power was used in old times for forming and laying rope which was too large to be made by hand.

How all this work is now done in a modern rope factory by ingeniously devised machinery we shall now see.

The opening room where the fiber is made ready for the preparation machinery is a reminder of the days when all rope-making processes were hand work. The bales are first opened up--in the case of Manila this means cutting the straw matting put on to protect the fiber in shipment. Then the hanks which are packed in various ways--sometimes doubled, sometimes twisted--are taken out and straightened and the band at the end of the hank removed.

No machinery has yet been perfected for doing the work just described but the first of the preparation processes, a short step beyond, tells quite a different story. Here the hanks of such fibers as require a special cleaning treatment are placed on fast working hackling machines which comb away most of the snarls, loose tow and dirt.

At this point hard fibers--Manila, Sisal and New Zealand--are usually oiled to soften them and to make them more workable for the operations that follow. The oil, furthermore, acts as a preservative. It is a matter of importance to the buyer, however, that the fiber should not be too heavily oiled, for that merely increases the weight and cost of the rope without improving its quality.

The wonder of modernism in rope-making is nowhere more striking than in the preparation room. To pass from one end, where the raw hemp is received just as it left the hands of the native Filipino laborer with his crude methods, down through the long rows of machines to the draw frames from which the sliver is delivered in a form that can be likened to a stream of molten metal, is to cover decades of inventive genius and mechanical development.

The mechanism performs its work so accurately that at first glance the man feeding the fiber into the machine and all the other men, busy about their various duties, would appear to be playing very minor parts in modern rope making. In reality, expert workmanship and watchfulness are very important factors. Good rope depends no more upon scientific machine processes than upon ceaseless attention to the little details, and this is especially true in the preparation room.

Before taking up the distinctly modern machines so largely used now in the final processes of rope-making--the forming of strands, laying of common ropes and closing of cable-laid goods--we will describe the rope-walk where much of this work is still best carried on.

[Illustration: HUGE BALES OF RAW ROPE MATERIAL

MANILA HEMP IN WAREHOUSE.]

For making tarred goods in all but the smaller sizes the walk has certain advantages not afforded by newer methods. It also provides efficient equipment for turning out the largest ropes, which would otherwise require special machinery.

[Illustration: A MODERN ROPE WALK

INTERIOR OF ROPE WALK, PLYMOUTH CORDAGE CO.]

The long alleys or grounds where the work takes place are usually laid out in pairs, one for forming, the other for laying and closing. Each ground has a track to accommodate the machines used and an endless band-rope which conveys the power.

[Illustration: NEAR VIEW OF MACHINE IN ROPE WALK.]

~HOW ROPE IS FORMED AND TWISTED~