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#57264 02/24/02 11:11 PM
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wwh Offline
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Dear of troy: is the material that turns from red to blue by any chance "litmus"? I did not know until I just looked it up that it is produced by a lichen. It turns pink in acid, and blue in alkali. Sometimes "litmus test" is used as a figure of speech meaning a simple test for a desired condition. It used to come on little strips of paper, and was very easy to use.


#57265 02/25/02 01:03 AM
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Ooo, I remember those little pieces of paper. Dipping them in test tubes to see if something was acid or alkaline. I have heard the "as a sort of litmus test" expression, but very seldom. People usually say "let's see if it pans out."


#57266 02/25/02 02:21 AM
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old hand
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I'm guessing, but I reckon a cup of sugar, or a cup of salt (and many other soluble things) would produce less than two cups of fluid once added to a cup of water.

Mind you, I don't know if you can dissolve one cup of sugar in one cup of water - it may not go......

stales


#57267 02/25/02 09:51 AM
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Dear Stales,

Just heat up that sugar in water, stir it slowly, and you'll at least get somethin' you can pour over your engine when you want to sell your broken down car. of Troy taught me that trick!

Best regards,
DubDub


#57268 02/25/02 11:51 AM
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Regarding Helen's cornstarch trick - If you take that concoction in your hand, and squeeze it, it feels solid, but then let your hand relax, and it runs out of your hand. Quite something! I used to do demonstrations for elementary school classes about chemistry, and that was always a fun one. They call it "Magic Mud" up here. There's a kids' magazine about science called OWL Magazine, and in it, Dr. Zed (not Zee!) has an experiment every month. One of his most famous is the Magic Mud.


#57269 02/25/02 01:20 PM
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Hi Helen,
sometime i am amazed that my kids never blew up the house, or burned it down!
when I was a youngster, my parents must have had similar apprehensions about my "laboratory" in the basement, e.g. when I heated sulfuric acid, and the vapors floated up the stairs. I also made glass on a little home-made furnace where a blower pushed burning coals up to 1500 degrees centigrade. Ruby glass uses a tiny amount of gold chloride, so it is not especially expensive from that point of view, but the color only develops on tempering the glass when it has first cooled down, and that's where secret art comes in.


#57270 02/26/02 06:38 PM
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There was a story about it in the Saturday Evening Post almost sixty years ago.
I must've missed that one, wwh.


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Here's a description of uranium glass from the Museum link I provided above (actually a link on the link). If you click on the url below you'll see a great picture of uranium glass, and when you drag your cursor over the pic you get the florescent view.


Yellowish-green
transparent glasses are
known as vaseline, canary
or uranium. Popular for
pressed glass novelties
and tableware during the
1880s and 1890s, this
glass utilized uranium
oxide as its colorant.
When subjected to
ultraviolet (black light), it
fluoresces lime green.


Clicke here for photo:
http://www.wheatonvillage.org/museum/uranium_glass.html


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