An Electric Fountain
Most of you would like to make an electric fountain, especially when you learn how simple and easily arranged is this striking experiment. Your apparatus consists solely of a glass, a long india-rubber tube, with two small glass tubes and a piece of sealing-wax (a stick of sulphur or piece of vulcanite will do just as well).
Make a small nozzle by drawing out a length of bent glass tubing, and, by means of a long piece of india-rubber piping, fix it to another piece of bent glass tubing. Place the first piece of tubing bent at two right angles over the side of a glass filled with water, taking care that the reservoir thus formed is from 3 to 4 feet above the nozzle ([Fig. 20]).
When the fountain is playing the issuing jet of water will be inclined to one side.
Now to electrify the fountain. Take the piece of sealing-wax, vulcanite, or sulphur, and, after seeing that both your hand and the material you hold are perfectly dry, rub the sealing-wax on the sleeve of your coat.
Fig. 20.—An electric fountain.
If now you hold the sealing-wax opposite the stream of water, at a distance of a few feet, a remarkable change will come over the cascades. Instead of the water falling in scattering drops, these latter will at once unite, and descend in a solid stream, whilst directly the sealing-wax is removed the jet of water returns to its original form. If the water be allowed to fall on a piece of stiff paper, a difference in sound will be noticed according as the water falls in a stream or in drops.