How to make a Cork fly out of a Bottle.
Put a little chalk or pounded marble into a phial, and pour on some water, with about a third part of sulphuric acid, and put in a cork: in a few seconds, the cork will be sent off with great violence.
To produce Gas Light, on a small Scale.
Take an ordinary tobacco pipe, and nearly fill the bowl with small coals, and stop the mouth of the bowl with any suitable luting, as pipe-clay, or the mixture of sand and common clay, or, as clay is apt to shrink, of sand and beer, and place the bowl in a fire between the bars of a grate, so that the pipe may stand nearly perpendicular. In a few minutes, if the luting be good, the gas will begin to escape from the stem of the pipe, when, if a piece of lighted paper or candle be applied, it will take fire and burn for several minutes with an intense light. When the light goes out, a residuum of useful products will be found in the bowl.
Thunder Powder.
Take separately, three parts of good dry saltpetre, two parts of dry salt of tartar, and pound them well together in a mortar; then add thereto one part, or rather more, of flour of brimstone, and take care to pound and mix the whole perfectly together: put this composition into a bottle with a glass stopper, for use.
Put about two drams of this mixture in an iron spoon, over a moderate fire, but not in the flame; in a short time it will melt, and go off with an explosion like thunder or a loaded cannon.
To tell, by the Dial of a Watch, at what hour any Person intends to rise.
Let the person set the hand of the dial to any hour he pleases, and tell you what hour that is, and to the number of that hour you add, in your mind, 12. After this, tell him to call the hour the index stands at that which he has fixed upon; and by reckoning backwards from this number to the former, it will bring him to the hour required.
Example.