Carleton Washburne

“ And among them is the sun, shining as brightly as ever and dazzling our eyes when we look at it. But its light does no good. When we look down from the sky toward the earth, everything is so black that we should think we were blind if we had not just seen the stars and sun. ”

“ As the white light of the sun passes through the raindrops, the violet part of the light is bent more than any of the rest, the indigo part is bent not quite so much, and so on to the red, which is bent least of all. So all the colors fan out from the single beam of white light and form a band of color, which we call the rainbow. ”

“ But in time they too are transformed into water vapor, and no more life as we know it is possible in the world. The earth has become a great rocky and sandy ball, whirling through space, lifeless and utterly dry. ”

“ Have you ever noticed that when you stand a little to one side of a mirror where you cannot see your own image in it, you can sometimes see that of another person clearly, while he cannot see his own image but can see yours? It is easy to understand this by comparing the reflection of the light from your face to his eye and from his face to your eye, to the bouncing of a ball from one person to another. Suppose you and a friend are standing a little way apart on sandy ground where you cannot bounce a ball, but that between you there is a plank. ”

“ If you were to lie down on the ground and have all the air pumped out from under you, the air above would crush you as flat as a pancake. You might as well let a dozen big farm horses trample on you, or let a huge elephant roll over you, as let the air press down on you if there were no air underneath and inside your body to resist the pressure from above. It is hard to believe that the air and liquids in our bodies are pressing out with a force great enough to resist this crushing weight of air. ”

“ As the day goes on, they begin to wilt and wither. We all wish the day were not quite so fine—a little rain would help things wonderfully. Not a cloud appears, however, and we water as much of our gardens as we can. They drink the water greedily, and that night, again no dew or fog, and not the faintest cloud or mist to dim the stars. ”

“ If a dog came out of a pool of water and shook himself while centrifugal force was not acting, the water, instead of flying off in every direction, would merely drip down to the ground as if the dog were not shaking himself at all. A cowboy would find that he could no longer throw his lasso by whirling it around his head. A boy trying to spin his top would discover that the top would not stand on its point while spinning, any better than when it was not spinning. ”

“ We have talked about making electricity work when it flows in a steady stream, and everybody knows that it makes lights glow, makes toasters and electric stoves hot, and heats electric irons. But did it ever strike you as remarkable that the same electricity that flows harmlessly through the wires in your house without heating them, suddenly makes the wire in your toaster or the filament in your incandescent lamp glowing hot? The insulation is not what keeps the wire cool, as you can see by the next experiment. ”

“ When you look at a flame, it seems as if fire were a real thing and not merely a process of combining something with oxygen. The flame is a real thing. It is made up of hot gases, rising from the hot fuel, and it is usually filled with tiny glowing particles of carbon. When you burn a piece of wood, the heat partly separates its elements, just as heating sugar separates the carbon from the water. Some of the hydrogen gas in the wood and some of the carbon too are separated from the wood by the heat. These are pushed up by the cooler air around and combine with the oxygen as they rise. ”

“ You know, of course, that the blue sky is only the air that surrounds the earth. Enough of the light is scattered around to make the sky as bright as the stars look from here; so we cannot see the stars through the sky in the daytime.
How a cloud can hide the sun without cutting off all its light. When a cloud drifts between us and the sun, we no longer see the sun; yet the earth does not become dark. The sun's light is evidently still reaching us. The cloud is made of millions of very tiny droplets of water. ”

“ Arc lights themselves, of course, are no more dangerous than is a fire in a kitchen stove. For an arc light is placed in such a way that nothing can well come near it to catch fire. The danger from the electric arc is like the danger from gasoline spilled and matches dropped where you are not expecting them, so that you are not protected against them. ”

“ But if you were suddenly to go up above the earth's atmosphere, or if you were to stay down here and go into a room from which the air were to be pumped all at once, your body would explode like a torpedo. ”

“ The difference between static electricity—when it leaps from one thing to another—and flowing electricity is a good deal like the difference between a short shower of rain and a river. Both rain and river are water, and the water of each is moving from one place to another; but you cannot get the raindrops to make any really practical machine go, while the rivers can do real work by turning the wheels in factories and mills. ”

“ The radiant heat from the incandescent filament in the lamp passed right out through the vacuum of the lamp, and much of it went on through the glass to your hand. You already know what a poor conductor of heat glass is; yet it lets a great deal of radiant heat pass through it, just as it does light. As soon as the lamp stops glowing, the heat stops coming; the glass is not made hot and you no longer feel any heat. In one way the electric filament shining through a vacuum is exactly like the sun shining through empty space: the heat from both comes to us by radiation. ”

“ The heat of the earth radiates out into the air and on out into space. At night, when the earth loses its heat this way and does not receive heat from the sun, it becomes cooler. When the air, carrying its water vapor, touches the cool leaves and flowers, the water vapor is condensed by the coolness and forms drops of dew upon them. Or, if the night is colder, the droplets freeze as they form, and in the morning we see the grass and shrubs all covered with frost. ”

“ Suppose you bounce up into an automobile for a ride. The automobile, now being made elastic by your magic touch, bounds up into the air at the first bump it strikes, and thereafter it goes hopping down the street in a most distressing manner, bouncing off the ground like a rubber ball each time it comes down. And each time it bumps you are thrown off the seat into the air.
You find it hard to stay in any new position. Your body always tends to snap back to the position you were in when you first became elastic. ”

“ A man on a bicycle can coast forever along level ground. Ships at sea can shut off steam and coast [pg 50] clear across the ocean. No machinery needs oiling. The clothes on your body feel smoother and softer than the finest silk. Perpetual motion is an established fact instead of an absolute impossibility; everything that is not going against gravity will keep right on moving forever or until it bumps into something else.
But, if there is no friction and you want to stop, you cannot. Suppose you are in an automobile when all friction stops. ”