Endless Amusement

Synopsis

Endless Amusement is a collection of NEARLY 400 entertaining experiments in various branches of science including acoustics, electricity, magnetism, arithmetic, hydraulics, mechanics, chemistry, hydrostatics, optics; wonders of the air-pump all the popular tricks and changes of the cards to which is added, a complete system of pyrotechny or the art of making fire-works. the whole so clearly explained as to be within the reach of the most limited capacity.

Excerpts:

To produce Fire by the Mixture of two cold Liquids:  Take half a pound of pure dry nitrate, in powder; put it into a retort that is quite dry; add an equal quantity of highly rectified oil of vitriol, and, distilling the mixture in a moderate sand heat, it will produce a liquor like a yellowish fume; this, when caught in a dry receiver, is Glauber's Spirits of Nitre; probably the preparation, under that name, may be obtained of the chemists, which will of course save much time and trouble.  You then put a drachm of distilled oil of cloves, turpentine, or carraways, in a glass vessel; and if you add an equal quantity, or rather more, of the above spirit, though both are in themselves perfectly cold, yet, on mixing them together, a great flame will arise and destroy them both, leaving only a little resinous matter at the bottom.

The Exploding Bubble.  If you take up a small quantity of melted glass with a tube, (the bowl of a common tobacco-pipe will do,) and let a drop fall into a vessel of water, it will chill and condense with a fine spiral tail, which being broken, the whole substance will burst with a loud explosion, without injury either to the party that holds it, or him that breaks it; but if the thick end be struck, even with a hammer, it will not break.

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