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Show jlDISCOVERIES OF THE SCIENTIST The lead bullet is doomed to go In wrought tungsten thore has been found a metal which for projectiles of all kinds is superior to lead In almost every way. For accurate nnd long range shooting, at least, the change will be a big Improvement. The metal for a bullet should be very dense, rather hard, and have a high melting polnu Lead is now used instead of iron, simply because its greater density makes a bullet of a given weight smaller, and so lets !t pass through the air with less resistance resist-ance Of tho metals heavier than lead hitherto available the cheapest is gold, which is rather expensive for that purpose But tungsten has Just about the same density as gold, about two-thirds two-thirds greater than that of lead, and its cost is not prohibitive. A cubic inch of water weighs less than three-fifths three-fifths of an ounco. An inch cube of tungsten weighs moro than eleven ounces The other advantages are that a tungsten bullet will not be molted out of shape, and thus kept from traveling travel-ing straight, as is sometimes the case with one of lead. Neither will it flatten flat-ten out so readily on striking any solid sol-id Soft-nosed bullets have been tabooed ta-booed by Tho Hague irlbunal, and it has been necessary on this account to give lead bullets, at least for military mili-tary purposes, a jacket of harder metal met-al Tungsten bullets will not require this They will be smaller, and keep their shape better, and will therefore enrry farther,, more accurately and with less drop than any projectile now made In fact, the difference in this last particular will be so great that all guns using the new bullets will have to have their sights changed for long range shooting. J Long Known and Little Used. Other uses for this metal will not be wanting Tungsten and molydenum are two metals that have been known, for over a century, but they are just beginning to find important commercial commer-cial uses Both have been used for some time in the making of aieclnl grades of steel, but the pure metals were at first described as being too brittle for use by themselves. Within the last few years this difficulty has been over come, and the result lias ueen tne tungsten lamp, the filament of which is a tungsten wire drawn In some cases to a diameter of less than a thousandth of an Inch. Other uses Just beginning depend on the high melting points of these two metals, which are more than a thousand thou-sand degrees above that of platinum. They can. therefore, be used In place of the more expensive platinum for electrical contacts and other purposes. For electric furnaces and for X-ray, tubes, they are really much better' than platinum, besides being far cheaper. About five hundred tons of tungsten were used In this country last year The New Kinds of Paint. A decade ago any paint that contained contain-ed a base other than white lead, or a vehicle other than turpentine or linseed lin-seed oil, was considered to be inferior or adulterated. At present, to quote one authority, "it is conceded that paint should be made for the purpose for which it Is Intended and should not necessarily be made from the highest prices materials that will produce pro-duce that result." in consequence, some interesting discoveries, all of which lead to economics, are being made. In 1910 the navy spent $70,000 lor turpentine. Last year the price of turpentine tur-pentine went up to $1.13 a gallon, and the navy bought instead a substitute ! made from petroleum. It cost less than 15 cents a gnllon. and turpentine turpen-tine is jio longer quite so Important. Mixed paint is used at the rate ot eighty million gallons a year, and its composition Is by no means confined to white load, linseed oil and turpentine. turpen-tine. Soya bean oil and china wood oil are beginning to be used extnesive-ly. extnesive-ly. Although the Chinese revolution put tho price of the latter up to than of turpentine, it is still being used I When the supply of linseed oil is short Menhaden fish oil is found to bo fully as good. Tho adoption of a battleship gray by Uncle Sam, -which contains zinc oxide and barytes, but not a bit of lead ought to be the death of the theory that white lead is tho only good pig monL The new paint is much cheaper, cheap-er, and resists salt water even better, than if it contained lead. Money to the Farmer. The manufacture of cottonseed oil does not seem to bo an especially promising field for chemical development develop-ment Yet in this one field the claim Is made that chomits have added sixty million dollars a year to the resources of tho country Three-fourths of this calculated increase goes to the farmer who supplies the cottonseed. In 1872 some fifty-two thousand tons of cottonseed were crushed, about 4 per cent of tho total crop. For it the mills paid only $S a ton In 1910 the j seed crushed amounted to more than , four million tons, or 60 per cent of the crop. And notwithstanding this immense im-mense increase the price went up to $27 a ton that year. This increase in value of $19 a ton on four million tons, or seventy-six million collars, Is for the most part a gift from the chemist to the cotton planter. The chemist claims most of the credit for it, because m the early days the oil was too impure and of too vav iable quality to have very many uses The tasto was so disagreeable as to make it of little value ns a food. Much of it went to make sonp. Only wkti the introduction of carefully worked j out methods of manufacture and of j nurlflcation has the field of useful- ' ness been enough increased to clause the present large demand. Now, a very pure, tasteless oil can be manufactured which Is available for food products Even before it was so dsirahle, large quantities were Hill I , no m used to adulterate lard, for cottonseed oil only costs 5 cents a pound. Thanks also to careful chemical investigation, in-vestigation, every ton of seed yields more oil than over before. Of the oil that used to bo nearly worthless except ex-cept for soap making only 7 per cent !s now of such poor quality. And even this small fraction is worked us into glycerin and the fatty acids It contains, thus Increasing Its value. The residue that remains after all the oil possible has been obtained is still, as heretofore, sold as "oil cake," a valuable val-uable cattle food. Buy a bottle of ol Ivc oil and part of it is likely to be the cottonseed product. The oil in which some sardines are packed and the cooking oil used as a substitute for lard grew on a cotton plant. The calculated increase in value from all these sources s worth to the manufacturers rather more than sixteen six-teen million dollars every year. And the planters' gain is three times this Behold the Useful Shark. A part of the "codllver oil" of the future will be oil thnt hns never seen a cod, but Is prepared from the livers of ocean Bharks. The industry is being be-ing started in Malaysia. In October the sharks come into the lagoons to pair, and skillful harpoon-ers harpoon-ers can spear them in large numbers It is customary to kill the male first, in which case the female also stays .to be harpooned. The sharks arc from seven to fifteen fif-teen feet long, and their waist meats urement is usually the same as the length. An 11-foot shark length or circumference gives about five gallons gal-lons of oil, worth from $1 to $2. This oil is taken to Europe to be refined and Is then sold as codllver oil. I Distilling Oil From Vood. The distillation of wood has been I discussed for at least half a century. Attempts to put It In practice, how- I ever, have not met with any great success. suc-cess. A process just put in operation promises to solve the whole problem The first commercial plant in this country was, probably, the. one built by James Stanley in Wilmington, N. C, in 1S72. Since then, wood distillation distil-lation projects have repeatedly been brought forward. And very few of them were at all successful. Either they got only a small part of the wood or the different products were blackened black-ened and impure. A tar oil for wood preservation, a very poor grade of turpentine, tur-pentine, wood alcohol nnd crude acet-ric acet-ric (pyroligneous acid), were the products prod-ucts obtainable. The change introduced in the new process docs not seem to be very great. It consists merely in heating the wood in a retort surrounded by a bath of oil, instead of over the free flame. This causes perfectly uniform ! even heating, and the improvement is at once apparent. The products usually turpentine, two grades of oil, and charcoal, are found to pay the best are much purer, and nearly colorless col-orless The quantities, too are larger. Under these circumstances, a cord of good pine wood gives 36 gallons of turpentine, 125 gallons of "heavy oil" and 25 to 30 bushels of good charcoal. The "heavy oil" is in great demand as a wood preservative. These products make the money value of a cord of waste pine wood of good qunlity about $25 Thousands of cords of such wood are burnt at sawmills every day, in part for power, in part morel' to gel rid of It Millions of cords are per i milled to rot on the ground. Under, these conditions, wood distillation ought to ho a coming industry. |