HOW TO DO
Chemical Tricks.
Containing Over One Hundred Highly
Amusing and Instructive Tricks
With Chemicals.
By A. ANDERSON.
HANDSOMELY ILLUSTRATED.
New York:
FRANK TOUSEY, Publisher,
24 Union Square.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1898, by
FRANK TOUSEY,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D.C.
HOW TO DO
CHEMICAL TRICKS.
From the remotest ages chemistry has exercised thestrongest fascination on the minds of the curious,nor is it a matter of surprise that boys should feelthemselves drawn strongly by its mystery andseeming magic. This attraction is undoubtedly caused bywhat the ancients called the elements, earth, air, fire andwater. There is something so weird about the manifestationof air and fire, that it is not difficult to understandhow the alchemists believed them to be forces able to beused at the bidding of spirits, who might be conjured upby incantations and spells.
Now it is known that these uncanny beings existed onlyin the imagination of the forerunners of modern chemists.Yet what boy can look on the brilliantly colored fires of aFourth of July display, or the burnished gold of the settingsun, or the fantastic pictures in the glowing coals ina grate, and not feel that there is still something of magicand mystery in fire still? What the boy feels, the scientistcannot explain. Nobody knows actually what fire is. Allthat can be said is that fire is produced by certain substances,such as coals, wood, or paper, that give out heat, whilepassing from one state to another.
Now the word “element” was and is used to mean that[4]simplest form of matter, which, with other simplest formsgoes to make up the whole world of everything in it. Theearth, animals, plants, the sea, the atmosphere, are allmade up of one or more of some seventy substances calledelements. Hence it is clear that the earth, air and waterare not, as the ancients thought, elements at all. As willbe seen in this little book, both air and water consist ofmixtures of elements. In chemistry such mixtures arecalled compounds. This word occurs again and again, soits explanation should be remembered.
One great fact must be remembered, which is at the veryroot of chemistry. Nothing is really lost, however muchits form may be changed, or however many changes it maypass through. For instance, it may seem that when ablock of wood be burned that a ve