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Show EXTREMES IN NATURE. An interesting list of the extremes in natural substances was recently compiled by Professor Hopkins of the University of Illinois, in which the following were named: Radium is the most expensive, being be-ing worth -about 100,000 times its weight in gold. Platinum is the heaviest of well-known well-known metals, being 21 times as heavy as water, but the rare metals osmium and iridium are slightly heavier. Hydrogen gas is the lightest ordinary ordin-ary substance, having only about one-fourteenth one-fourteenth the weight of air, but a temporary gas produced in certain vacuum is somewhat lighter. Diamonds are the hardest substance sub-stance known, but carborundum is almost al-most as hard. Electric furnaces produce the greatest great-est heat known on earth, running up to nearly 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit, while the extreme in cold is solid helium and other gases, which solidfy at about 458 degrees below zero. These extremes of heat and cold are not natural, however, but are produced produc-ed by artificial means. |