The Romance of Modern Chemistry

CONTENTS CHAPTER XI HOW FIRE IS MADE PAGE Fire by friction—Two minutes required to get a light—Flint and steel—Fire syringe and burning-glass—The first lucifer matches—The dangers of phosphorus, and how they are avoided—Three hundred million matches a day in England —Dobereiner’s lamp and catalytic action—A modern cigar- lighter—Spontaneous combustion—Why haystacks and oily rags take fire of their own accord . . . • • .118 CHAPTER XII NATURE’S stores of fuel Wood, peat and coal—Why burning wood blazes more than burn- ing coal—How an American engineer “ struck oil ”—Subter- ranean reservoirs in the United States and Russia—.Natural gas in England—When will it be necessary to carry coals to Newcastle ?—Fuel from peat bogs—Potatoes a source of fuel...............................................131 CHAPTER XIII MORE ABOUT FUEL A juvenile experiment in the making of coal gas—What happens when coal is heated—Valuable products from the gasworks —Coke for iron-smelting—Water gas—The energy latent in a pound of coal—Liquid versut solid fuel—George Stephenson and “ bottled-up sunshine ”........................142 CHAPTER XIV flame: what is it! Flame not always a feature of combustion—How air may be burned—The structure of a flame—What makes a flame luminous — Candles at the top of Mont Blanc — Ignition temperatures—Risk of flames in “ gassy ” mines—Davy’s safety lamp—How fire-damp is detected by flame-caps . . 154 CHAPTER XV EXPLOSIONS AND EXPLOSIVES A aensitive substance which resents the tread of a fly—Mercury fulminate — The difference between “inflammable” and “ explosive ”—Gunpowder—High explosives and smokeless powders—How cotton is converted into gun-cotton—Powder that need not be kept dry—The curious effect of detonators —Nitro-glycerine and dynamite......................166 11