FLUKE (probably connected with the Ger. flach, flat), a name given to several kinds of fish, flat in shape, especially to the common flounder; also the name of a trematoid worm, resembling a flounder in shape, which as a parasite infects the liver and neighbouring organs of certain animals, especially sheep, and causes liver-rot. The most common is the Fasciola hepatica (see [Trematodes]). It is also the name of a species of kidney potato. Probably from a resemblance to the shape of the fish, “fluke” is the name given to the holding-plates, triangular in shape, at the end of the arms of an anchor, and to the triangular extremities of the tail of a whale. The use of the word as a slang expression for a lucky accident appears to have been first applied in billiards to an unintentional scoring shot.
FLUME (through an O. Fr. word flum, from the Lat. flumen, a river), a word formerly used for a stream, and particularly for the tail of a mill-race. It is used in America for a very narrow gorge running between precipitous rocks, with a stream at the bottom, but more frequently is applied to an artificial channel of wood or other material for the diversion of a stream of water from a river for purposes of irrigation, for running a sawmill, or for various processes in the hydraulic method of gold-mining (see [Aqueduct]).
FLUMINI MAGGIORE, a town of the province of Cagliari, Sardinia, 10 m. by road N. of Iglesias, and 5 m. from the W. coast. Pop. (1901) town 3908; commune 9647. It is the centre of a considerable lead and zinc mining district. Three miles to the S. are the ruins of a temple erected probably in the time of Commodus (Corpus inscr. Lat. x., Berlin, 1883, No. 7539). They seem to mark the site of Metalla (mines), a station on the coast road from Sulci to Tharros, and the centre of the mining district in Roman times. At Flumini Maggiore itself were found two ingots of lead, one bearing a stamp with Hadrian’s name.
FLUORANTHENE, C15H10, also known as idryl, a hydrocarbon occurring with phenanthrene, pyrene, diphenyl, and other substances in “Stupp” fat (the fat obtained in working up the mercury ores in Idria), and also in the higher boiling fractions of the coal tar distillate. It was discovered by R. Fittig in 1878, who, with Gebhard and H. Liepmann, elucidated its constitution (see Ann., 1879, 200, p. 1). The hydrocarbons are separated from the “Stupp” by means of alcohol, the soluble portion on distillation giving first phenanthrene and then a mixture of pyrene and fluoranthene. From the tar distillate, the chrysene can be fractionally precipitated, and the fluoranthene can be separated from most of the pyrene by fractional distillation in a partial vacuum. In either case the two hydrocarbons are finally separated by fractional crystallization of their picrates, which are then decomposed by ammonia. Fluoranthene crystallizes in large slender needles or monoclinic tables, melting at 109-110° C. and boiling at 250-251° C. (60 mm.). It is easily soluble in hot alcohol, ether and carbon bisulphide. On oxidation with chromic acid it forms a quinone, C15H8O2, and an α-diphenylene ketocarboxylic acid
The picrate melts at 182-183° C.