He will probably tell you that he is not conversant with Oriental languages. He will not believe it if you tell him it is written in good English, but place a frameless mirror perpendicularly on the mysterious script, right across the quotation marks, and it will appear as shown in Fig. 2. We understand at once that the reflected image is the faithful copy of the written half.
With the aid of a few books arrange the mirror and the paper as shown in Fig. 3 and ask your friend to write anything he chooses, with the condition that he shall see his hand and read the script in the mirror only. The writer will probably go no farther than the first letter. His hand seems to be struck with paralysis and unable to write anything but zigzags, says Scientific American.
Another experiment may be made by taking an egg shell and trimming it with the scissors so as to reduce it to a half shell. In the hollow bottom roughly draw with your pencil a cross with pointed ends. Bore a hole, about the size of a pea, in the center of the cross. Place yourself so as to face a window, the light falling upon your face, not upon the mirror which you hold in one hand. Close one eye. Place the shell between the other eye and the mirror, at a distance of 2 or 3 in. from either, the concavity facing the mirror as shown in Fig. 4. Through the hole in the shell look at the mirror as if it were some distant object. While you are so doing the concave shell will suddenly assume a strongly convex appearance. To destroy the illusion it becomes necessary either to open both eyes or to withdraw the shell away from the mirror. The nearer the shell to the mirror and the farther the eye from the shell the more readily comes the illusion.
Miniature Electric Lamps
Types of "Radium" Lamps
After several years' research there has been produced a miniature electric bulb that is a great improvement and a decided departure from the old kind which used a carbon filament. A metallic filament prepared by a secret chemical process and suspended in the bulb in an S-shape is used instead of the old straight span. The voltage is gauged by the length of the span. The brilliancy of the filament excels anything of its length in any voltage. Of course, the filament is not made of the precious metal, radium; that simply being the trade name. However, the filament is composed of certain metals from which radium is extracted.
The advantages of the new bulb are manifold. It gives five times the light on the same voltage and uses one-half of the current consumed by the old carbon filament. One of the disadvantages of the old style bulb was the glass tip, which made a shadow. This has been obviated in the radium bulb by blowing the tip on the side, as shown in the sketch, so as to produce no shadow.