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HomeMy WebLinkAboutZurich Herald, 1921-09-15, Page 7HOW TO REMEDY ELECTRIC TILOUBLES. ,Automobile drivers experience more -trouble on the road now -a -days from something electric than .probably from any other cause. And doubtless the electrical parte of a ear are the least 'understood by the average owner, Many autoists have no idea of the functions of batteries and wires and switches and other parts .of the elec- trical equipment. Consequently when „anything along this line goes wrong, they aze helpless. In .dealing 'with the electrical equip - there was no improvement. So it was taken apart again, and a careful in-; speotion showed that one end of the taper on the inside of the terminal hada slight shoulder which prevented the taper end of the wire from being drawn into place snugly, Therefore a very light .contact was made, and sufficient .eilrrent could not pass to operate the starting motor• This shoulder was removed with a penknife, and the engine started without diffi- culty. Look at Source of Current. Several hours of time would have enezit of a machine the ownerc'should been : saved if the owner had started understand that a complete circuit is to look for the trouble at the source necessary in order to have the current do its work. That is, starting with the battery as the course, a wire leads the current from the battery through the switch to the device to be operated and then the current must be led back to the :battery. In looking for troubles the first thing to inspect is the battery. To see ifit is charged a voltmeter or a hydro- meter should be used. Each terminal from the battery should be tested. For instance, there is a wire to the light- ing switch. It is insulated, and the first thing to test, after making sure that the battery is all right, is at the switch. If there is no current there the wire may be broken or the termi- nal connections poor. But whatever the trouble may be it must be limited to this one small stretch of wire. The next step is to test where the wire leaves the switch to go to the device to be operated. If the current gets to . the switch and does not 'eget out of it it is apparent that the trouble is in the switch, or if it gets • to the switch, but not through the fuse, the fuse is at fault. If the current leaves the fuse, but , does not get to the lamp which the switch controls, then it is certain that the trouble is in that wire somewhere: of the current, instead of puzzling over the endof a wire that was net intended to be connected to anything. and had nothing to do with the trouble. It ,was simply an extra wire for use in ease some certain new device. should be installed. In my experience corroded battery terminals are respon- sible fora majority of the electrical troubles. A week later this same man was unable to start his engine, and again he worked over it •for several hours before calling for help. This time the lights were all right, but the engine would not start. To determine the con- dition of on-ditionof the battery, he turned on a light and depressed the starter pedal, as before,' to see if the light would dim very math under the heavy. load. As it did not, itwas decided that the battery was all right this time. The hood was opened and it was ob- served that when the starter pedal was d the fan did not revolve and therefore the engine was not �being, turned over, though one could hear the starting motor buzzing plainly. This showed that the overrunning clutch of -the starter motor was slipping. As correcting this trouble was a shop jab, the owner cranked the engine over by hand, but still it did not start. If the current gets to the lamp but the To make sure that the spark was lamp will not light, it.is certain that I being delivered, the wire leading from the difficulty is in the lamp. If the I the ignition coil to the high tension current is traced through the lamp i distributor was disconnected and given but does not reach the :battery, then about a one -sixteenth -inch gap. As the wire leading back to the battery„is I soon as this was done it was plain to k was being delivered.. Also the engine started immediately. Looking Over the "Ground.'.' Making a slight gap in the secondary If the juice is carried back through circuit increases the intensity of the the frame of the car, as is often the spark at the •plug and often aids in case, frequently the ground connec- starting a balky motor. This was an tions are poor or there is a break, in 1 occasion when 'an outside spark gap the ground. Thus a ground wire might I was of valde. After the engine was be attached to a .piece of iron on the warned up, it could be started any dash. If the dash is of wood, that piece of iron might be insulated from the remainder • of the metal work of the car and the ground connection would' be complete. A`friend' of mine recently spent half a day, aided and abetted by friendly neighbors, trying to find out where an extra wire on his switch should be connected. He could not get the` en- gine started, the horn would not blow, the headlights would not light, the starting motor would not turn over, but the dash and tail light, which were in series,.did light. A little experimentation. developed the fact that •wvhen the starting pedal was depressed the dash light grew very' dim. This indicated that it was :,possible to draw 'a large amount of current from the battery or that the battery was either in a discharg- ed condition or that the connections leading from it were poor. It was found. that' when .the wire connected to the battery terminal was moved the Eight would brighten up. This wire was disconnected and cleaned carefully to make sure:that the contact *a,good. But when it was assenvbl`ec depr esse at fault see that a spar time without 'difficulty. Study the Wiring Diagram. Other electriesl;troubles.inelude sick horns which give out awful sounds in place of the usual not -too -musical tones, and sick lights which failto brighten the corners where motorists are apt to be, in the night. Most of these troubles point to the fact that a complete circuit is necessary to have an electrical t:urrent do its work. Therefore, when electrical troubles oc- cur, the course of the juice should be eltamined first and then the current should 'be traced through its entire path leading from and returning to the battery. A little concentrated: study of the wiring diagram of a car will help an owner to become somewhat of a nerve specialist in the realm .of ,automotive electrical mechanics and should be of great practical value to him in oper- ating Iiia car. — In Cuba, tobacco is planted, grown and gathered in ninety days. People are never impressed with a man's importance by an arrogant or over -bearing manner. •the 'n't ✓et'0 15 me ,,o.f.:;:7))/s,{ :_iiii: :Loc,...1,441)1' i !y �•''-- r JI ‘s (Ills ate ,c d e: .1g ..-� Alt Cl} Yk611l29 ` colors, electricity playing an impor ”' ---� tant part in the process. - among the 'sto our efficiency. Each member of the ex- has designed a burlap crate enclosed ®OFSOUTHERN TRIP pedition is imbued with love of the within a cylindrical crate. job. and with the ,spirit of adventure. In the centre of a new ash tray is Se'.I hope that. our expedition, like a,ree1 of paper coated with material former ones, will be a happy family for striking safety matches, scene of o`er te, New. of c e c Jamaica, will electrify its Govern - meat railway, utilizing water power to Produce current; Water is heated Ip a new laundry machine for home use by a tiny coal Move beneath the tank. . ;To save room an inventor' has in- - serted a phonograph in the case of a player piano, making two instruments Occupy the floor space of one. Several planters in Sumatra are ex- perimenting with camphor cultivation. Sausage casings have been invented which are made of wood pulp cellu- los°. Norwegian experimenters are try- ing to drive automobiles with acety- lene gas, Phonograph needles ;which produce a very clear tone' are being made of clay. Tho magnification is adjustable in a telescope rifle sight invented in Eur- ope. Both ends of steel pins are counter- sunk at the same time with a new drilling machine. When a new sunshade is closed i An hydro -electric plant of 20,000. horsepower has bean oomploted. in IF name to supply power to I4yons.. Among the household novelties is a porons covered dish whi�eh keeps ite contents cool by evaporation. invented in England is :a wom.an'.s vanity bag which ejecta a shoe siiiniug pad when a spring is pressed. To help solve its fuel problem the Government of Brazil is encouraging the planting of Eucalyptus trees. A new word counter for typewriters is mounted on one end of the space bar being operated as the bar is de- pressed. Experiments in England indicate that fish dried in electrically heated air can be kept in good condition for years, A woman le the patentee of a cook : book in which each recipe is illus- trated by pictures of the ingredients to he used. An electro -magnet instrument has been invented by a French scientist to test a person's memory and power of t attention. becomes a handbag, the handle dis- The French Government is eon - appearing within it and the carrying sidering damming the Upper Nile to being done with loops. irrigate sufficient land in the French The Argentine Government has or- Sudan to supply all France's require- dered a `technical investigation of na- ments in cotton. tine materials suitable for the manu- The designer of a new anvil for gar - facture of news paper. ages claims it will fit all types of auto - To hold a flashlight on a person's mobile rims that need to be straighten - arm and have both hands free is the ed with some of its numerous faces or purpose of a wire bracket invented by grooves. a 'Pennsylvanian. A plant has been reopened in Tas- French chemists have patented a mania for the development of some method for dyeing textiles with dry 8,000,000 tons of shale in a single de- posit, estimated to contain 360,000,444 gallons of oil. A self-winding electric clock in New Jersey is. automatically corrected at noon each day by wireless impulses from the Government Observatory. at Washington, D.C. An unsinkable lifeboat invented will be launched from a ohute sufficiently far from the side of a ship to avoid danger of striking it. One species of American holly has been found to contain large amounts of caffeine, as much as one 'and one- half per cent. of the drug being obtain- ed from dried leaves. the scientific staff, whether in For protecting bananas from bruis- SHACKLETON TALKS kehold or on deck, will add to ing while being shipped an inventor New Means of FIyi ng to Great Heights The atmosphere, of course, gets thinner as altitude above the earth in- ereases. This means less resistance to the thrust of the airplane propeller. At high levels the thinning of the air and its low temperature have a tendency to interfere with the normal operation of the driving engine. Means of obviating these difficulties are provided by a method of airplane constructione which a New Jersey in- ventor, Samuel D. Mott, has newly patented. Summed up, they might be described as a system of barometric control which the inventor asserts will virtually overcome the troubles previ- ously :experienced iii flying at high at- titudes, The propeller is so constructed that, by the help of • a barometric device, changes of air -pressure automatically alter the angle of its- blades. In other words, the "pitch" of the propeller changes responsively tothe density of the air, so that the action of its blades Upon the atmosphere is accommodated for high levels. Thus, the higher the machine goes, the faster it can travel, resistance to its forward movement being less. In the rear part of the machine is a sealed compartment into which air is pumped by a rotary blower -fan driven by an electric motor, independent of the aircraft engine. The fan is bar- ometrically controlled. As the pres- sure of the Surrounding atmosphere falls (In going up) the air inside the tank pushes a piston which so ants up- on the electric controller as to in- crease the speed and power of ,the E N D E R B Y QUADRANT NEGLECTED. "The Impossibility of To -day is the Commonplace of To- morrow, Says. Traveller. A correspondent of the London Times, who interviewed Sir Ernest Shackleton on his voyage of;explora- tion•in the little ship Quest, writes: "First I questioned Sir Ernest on devoted to making a susses• sof the which can be removed to present a enterprise. Let me say, also, the ship fresh surface when worn. is•' fitted with •every labor saving de - Seaplanes Are Useful. "About the seaplane—what do you expect to do with it?" I consider that seaplanes or airplanes are now a seriousfactor in explora- tion. Undoubtedly, when the weather is :calm, we can gain more informa- tion on the trend •of the .Antarctic coastline orthe position and extent cf floating pack ice from a height of 5 000 feet in an airplane than would An Englishman is the inventor of apparatus which automatically re- ceives radio messages and translates and prints them in ordinary type on a paper ribbon. ARTIFICIAL HEAT geometrical shape makes it look as if . carved by a stone -cutter. Beryl is a silicate of aluminum. True emerald is- Rivas s- R rl kia s RE merely a variety of beryl with enough coloring to give it a vivid green hue. True topaz is exactly the same ma- terial tinted yellow. the region he is going to explore. He answered me with a particular refer- he gained in weeks of Battering IMITATING. NATURE IN Oriental amethysts have been pro - through the ice in the ship. One's hori- zon from the crow's nest of the Qnest is approximately eleven miles. From the seaplane we shall be able to en- large this horizon so much that it may make all the difference to our manoeuv- ring in the pack." "Have yeti any theories on the sort of weather ,you are liltely to get when. e ou reach the Antarctic?" That is a most difficult question. oiur `On t Tait _expeilitioir•ahere.vvas. R>wae-; tically no summer. I' understand from the Argentine Meteorogical Station at the South Orkneys that last winter was the mostsevere ever recorded in the south polar regions. It is just pos- sible that the Southern sunimer this -yearmay be an open one for naviga- tion. If so, instead of a falling to ,ewenty miles a day progress, the ship may reel off 100 to 150 miles." "A •fine rate to plunge into the un- known." "Yes; one feels what Keats calls 'the dearth of human words and the roughness of mortal speech' when one tries to express all the experience means." "Yet there are people who say it is nothing but fun—for the explorer." "You mean the people who ask what isthe good of all this exploration? If theirs had been the view held 600 years ago, and explorers had not gone ,.forward, we should have had a cramp- ed and sorry world to live in now. Life must be lived not for the moment alone; we must live and order our lives for posterity as well as our- selves.. The impossibility of to -day is the commonplace of to -morrow, and it is surely the privilege of a century like our own to extend the bounds of human understanding farther than they have yet been placed." ence to the Antarctic, which is only a part, though a very large part, of his object.. "It is a curious thing," he said, "that the Enderby Quadrant has bee -meg- lected by explorers—by modern ex- plorers, I mean. I think this rs'ldue in great measure to the fact thee noaex- tensive land mass has acted aa'a mag- net net on their imagination Search for Lost Islands. In the •Ross Quadrant the gigantic elevations and volcanoes, and in the Weddell Quadrant themountains of Graham Landhave naturally attracted men to followup certain lines and find, if possible their terminations.- While in the Enderby Quadrant there are the same stormy ice laden seas to plough;. through, no big land masses stir the fancy. But, if the vision widens be- yond the distant horizon, one can des- cry a goal: those mountains not yet seen, those gulfs not yet entered, those icy barriers yet unmeasured. Here in this narrowing world of ours are 3,000 miles of land or sea to explore. Such is the most serious work of the Quest." "And what of the lost islands?" "To my mind an island always has a fascination. There is something, compact and personal about it, no mat- ter atter how desolate it may be. Some of the islands we are goingto visit, end the others we shall try to locate, will have their history written only' on the rocks and their life displayed only in the scanty plant and animal existence. "We may find a connection between some of these islands and the nearest continent. We may come on purely indigenous forms of life. One such discovery may throw a flood of light on; the building of the world and the changes that have passed over it. With the staff that man's the Quest, infor- mation of value to the scientists at home is sure to be forthcoming.` But what may be discovered I ani not an a position even to prophesy." motor, causing the fan to revolve fast- er, and storing a larger volume of the more tenuous air in the above-men- tioned compartment. The idea is to keep the air in the compartment at approximately normal sea -level density, no matter how far aloft the; airplane may be sailing. As the machine descends, and the atmos- phere becomes more dense, the speed of the motor and its fan slows clown, until near the ground the motor auto- matically stops running. A similar barometric contrivance is used for opeaating a heater, to keep the air inside the compartment at a moderate and constant temperature. To furnish the requisite current, a dy- namo generator driven by the engine, is employed, an aria moving over a series of contacts so as to throw out or in any number of heater -sections in automatic response to ohanges• of at- mospheric pressure. Thus the higher the airplane ascends, the greater the amount of heat supplied. The aim in view is to supply the en- gine, at all levels, with air of the same density and temperature. But an- other important object may be gained by "feeding" this warm sea -level air to the aviators: This may be accomplished by pro- viding them with suitable airtight in- flatable suits and connected head- pieces, somewhatlike those worn by divers, but as light as possible, the air they need for breathing and to keep them warm being supplied to them from the tank through suitable pipes, supplemented by valves for per- mitting its escape when expired. A Coast Line Voyage. "Shall you make the land journey?" "We are equipped to land and make short journeys for geological purposes, and also for magnetic observations. Practically no magnetic work has been done in this area -I am alluding, of course, to the continent. Landings will always be 'made, wherever pos- sible, on the islands; and 'dip' and other magnetic observations carried out. But the ships will not winter in the Antarctic. Were I going to the Ross Sea or the Weddell it would be necessary in the interests of explora- tion to winter. A coast line voyage, if we can achieve it successfully) will add much more to our knowledge of the continental nature of the Antarc- tic than isolated journeys into the In- terior from fixed positions," "Maur ship is very small," "Just 111 feet long. Yes, She is very small. But, properly handled, she will be safer in stormy Weather that 'a larger vessel: and in the ice she will have the supreme advantage of being able to twist and turn more readily," "And how will it work having a. crew hunter in the province. Each cougar In the National Museum, at Wash- all ashall oilicers and no seamen?" is now netting the hunter about $65. ington, is a single crystal of beryl that "Well; at least nine of the sixteen Some of the daring "nimrods" bag weighs 1,100 pounds, Though "in the are seafaring men, and willing 'hands a four and live a day. rough,," exactly as nature made it, ite• MAKING PRECIOUS SOUS duced in pottery furnaces by accident —a fact which seems to make meta STONES. fest the practicability of manufactur- ing all kinds of corundum gems, in-, High Temperatures Obtain- able in Electric Furnace May Assist in- Diamond Manu- facture. '^ `T1Ce"_temperature...ot atke, sun is esti- mated at 10,000 degrees Fahrenhh lit We can beat it. The most improved electric furnaces can .produce a heat 4,000 degrees higher than that. This is a matter of much importance to mankind, inasmuch as industries de- pendent upon the electric furnace and its products are becoming and will continue to became steadily more numerous - No volcano can approach the heat of the electric arc. Thus the latter may be said to open the way MMto a whole domain of chemistry, which as yet is only beginning to be explored. It may be that before very long the chemist, with the help of the electric furnace, will be able to reproduce all kinds of precious stones. Their ma- terials are simple and well known. ilIany years ago M. Moissan, a French- man, made indubitable diamonds by raising to 5,400 degrees a mixture of sugar charcoal and soft iron, the car- bon crystalizing out of the mass un- der great pressure. Unfortunately they were very tiny and their manu- facture was expensive. One of the commonest substances in nature is the metal aluminum; it forms 7 per cent. of the crust of the earth. Oxide of aluminum is what we call corund im; it may be bought cheaply by the pound. Yet corundum is the material of most of the very precious gem -stones. New Use for Seaplanes. A new use for the seaplane has been found on the Pacific Coast by the of- ficials, of the department of marine and fisheries working in co-operation with the air -board authorities at the Vancouverseaplane station, It is in carrying fish eggs from the hatcheries to otherwise inaccessible parts of the coast dine where the eggs can be placed under the water in special boxes in- vented by one of the hatchery officers and allowed to complete hatching there, Patrols are also being under- taken in connection with the fisheries department by officials to circumvent fur poachers who stray into forbidden waters. War Against the Cougar. Excellent results are being obtained by the British Columbia Clai, e Cone servation Board in its war ttgairlst Die time d �, that a process hats been c}iscovered cougar inaugurated some Nelson Island, known as: one of the whereby true emeralds (a.s distinguish - worst cougar haunts on the coast, hale ed from the Oriental) are obtained by been absolutely cleaned of theee ani- fusing beryl at extremely high tem - male through the activities, ;of Sam perature with a small proportion of Becker, said to be the finest cougar some metallic oxide. eluding the sapphire and ruby. Producing Artificial Stones. Indeed, both sapphires and rubies are now being artificially made in France, and are said to be practically indistinguishable from the natural stones, the materials being the same etleat,.„nat eee- uses. The main difficulty has been to pr" o�ince rerfect3•y^'°elea and transparent crystals. The process is very simple, the re- quisite high temperature being, fur- nished by the oxyhydrogen blowpipe. This instrument, long familiar, is a forked tube through which oxygen and hydrogen are brought together and ig- nited producing an intense heat. A finely powdered mixture, consisting of 98 per cent. aluminum oxide, 1% per cent of iron oxide (iron rust) and Half of 1 per cent. of titanium oxide (for coloring), is poured down in a small continuous trickle through the blow- pipe, and, being melted, falls in in- candescent •drops• into a cup of lime. As it cools it crystalizes, forming a pear-shaped globule of sapphire. The same process serves for the production of ruby, a small quantity of oxide of chromium (to give the red color) being substituted for the ti- tanium. Diamonds in nature are a volcanic product. Those found in South Africa occur in ancient volcanic pipes—that is to say, in v vent -holes out of which' lava streams flowed once upon a time. Such conditions imply enormous heat and tremendous pressure, a result be- ing the crystallizing out of carbon iu the farm of diamonds --some of those found being so huge (one of them' weighing over a pound) that they have actually bad to be chopped into pieces in order to be marketable. Able as we now are to engender tem- peratures far higher than the volcanic), it might be supposed that we could make t emaf s-_ But of � eizee Quite .poss- r sibly we may. it is cifnceivable that in nature a great length of time may be required for the production of large diamond crystals. What We Know of Gems. Colorless crystals of corundum are white sapphires. Blue ones are blue sapphires. Green ones are Oriental topaz. Red .ones are rubies. Oriental amethyst is corundum- The material of all of these is the same; it is mere- ly stained with different tints by vari- ous mineral salts, which in a way are impurities. • Thus, it is oxide of chromium that makes the ruby red, and oxide of ti- tanium that paints the sapphire bine. The true amethyst (not to be confused with the Oriental variety) owes its purplish pink color to oxide of man- ganese. Well acquainted as we are with the simple substances, w3icle oto Coni- pose the gem -stones, it ough surely to be possible for chemists to reproduce them in the laboratory, In some cases iq./ ,h. ' i 1191v id, &coin fished a a hews esjiateli from aria states In Our Garden. In our garden Happy hours, Moist warm earth And smell of flov'er.e. Drone of bees And butterflies, Great tall fillies, Deep blue skies. In out ar ;art Song Of birds, , Happy hearts And gentle words. Children's laughter, Flowers to pull, You are 'here, love, Life is. full. —Florence M. Edmonds. v` ! Nobel„ the founder of the Nobel vises, s, owed his vasa .fortune to his difioovery of dynamite.