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[Copy Friday, November 12, 1915. ARTICLES: CONTENTS. ... ... .... PAGE 235 The Yield of Paper on Green Stem of Banana, by C. Beadle and PHYSICAL SOCIETY ..... 240 CORRESPONDENCE,-Frost Bite in the Trenches................ 245 246 Registered as [ PRICE 44. A meeting of the Research Fund Committee will be held in December next. Applications for Grants, to be made on forms which can be obtained from the ASSISTANT SECRETARY, must be received on or before WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 1st, 1915. All persons who received grants in December, 1914. or in Deceniber of any previous vear, hose accounts have not been declared closed by the Council, are reminded that reports must be in the hands of the Honorary Secretaries not later than Wednesday, December 1st. The Council wish to draw attention to the fact that the income arising from the donation of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths is to be more or less especially devoted to the encouragement of Research in Inorganic and Metallurgical Chemistry. 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Salary £120 per annum.-Maypole Margarine Works, Ltd., Southall. The Leading Paper for Everyone interested in Wanted, experienced reliable Works Chemist Photography. Special Articles on PICTORIAL and MODERN SCIENTIFIC PHOTOGRAPHY. The best and brightest Photographic Weekly for the Beginner or Advanced Worker. PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED. Specimen Copy free. Office: 51, LONG ACRE, LONDON, W.C. for Flour Mill work. Must be ineligible for military. Abstainer preferred.-Apply, stating experience, age, wages required, and full particulars, to JOSEPH RANK, Ltd., " Baltic House," Leadenhall Street, London, E.C. CHEMICAL NEWS, Nov. 12, 1915 } Electrolysis of Hydrochloric Acid using a Copper Anode. on 235 the dry weight of the fibre. The same material when dried the field like making hay, and then treated chemically by conversion into paper, only yielded 32 per cent. The crushed and dried material consumed 6 per cent of alkali on the weight of the paper produced, whereas the plat dried without washing, by reason of the fact that it contained much material which had to be got rid of and which would otherwise have been removed by the culated on the weight of paper produced. It is quite evident, therefore, that fibre of this class would have to undergo some mechanical process of treatment on the field or at some convenient collecting centre, very near to the gathering ground, in order that the chemical treatment could be effected in an economical manner. THE YIELD OF PAPER ON GREEN STEM OF crushing mills, consumed 18 per cent of soda, also cal BANANA. By CLAYTON BEADLE and HENRY P. STEVENS. As a general rule, materials such as crop plants, when tested to determine their value for paper-making, are sent over in the form of dried stems, generally gathered on the field in the green state and dried before being sent off, or in some few cases in the form of "dressed" fibre prepared by combing the green stems or passing them through crushing rollers, and drying. All analytical figures in such cases have to be calculated upon the weight of the plant as received. All such figures, although valuable in them. selves, lose most of their practical utility when applied to green crop plants such as the banana; in fact, green crop plants in general. Moreover, the mere fact that the banana stem is capable of being converted into paper and is at the same time a waste and hitherto unutilised product is of little practical importance unless it is taken in conjunction with the cost of gathering and transport of the green stems from the field to a centre or locality where it can be dealt with. On this point no opinion can be formed until some knowledge is obtained of the yield of paper or pulp on the green weight of the stem. This particular point of view appears never to have been sufficiently considered when discussing the possibilities of certain classes of fibres, such as green crop plants, for the manufacture of paper. The class of fibre to which we refer is typified, for instance, by the banana which has been so frequently experimented upon for the manufacture of paper on account of the enormous quantities of banana plants which go to waste. If a plant like the banana is to be used in the manufacture of paper, it must be either taken in the dried state and transported to some locality where the whole of the dried plant is converted into paper, or it must be transported in the green state to some centre where the same operation can be conducted. Or, if it is to be shipped, in addition to reaping and gathering it would have to be passed through crushing rollers, dried, and baled. It is difficult to conceive how these operations could be carried out on the field, and, by whatever method the fibre is obtained, it is of great importance to form an estimate of the amount of green material which would have to be handled to produce a ton of paper. With a view to arriving at some conclusion in regard to this point, we have constructed the accompanying table, which gives in Column I the percentage of fibre obtained on the green weight, Column 2 the number of tons of green weight that would have to be handled to yield a ton of dressed fibre, Column 3 the approximate number of tons of green weight which would have to be handled and transported per ton of paper produced. These results have been gathered together from different sources. The mean figure for the green weight to be handled is no less than 132 tons per ton of paper produced. This assumes a production of paper equal to half the dry weight of the raw fibre. This is a figure which for this class of paper we find to be a very reasonable assumption. It is quite evident that the mere reaping, gathering, and transporting, even for a short distance, of such large weight of green atem would render the cost of getting together large supplies of these materials absolutely prohibitive. If the material is merely dried upon the field and then transported in the dry state, without dressing or washing, the yield is very disappointing. In the case of a fibre of this description which, when passed through crushing rollers and dried, yielded between 50 and 60 per cent of paper on THE apparatus was similar to that employed for the experiments with the gold anode, save that the beaker, porous pot, and electrodes were enclosed in a bell-jar over water, so that the electrolysis might be performed in an atmosphere of nitrogen. The anolyte was stirred as previously. The current used was o'5 ampère. No copper was deposited on the cathode, nor was there any trace of copper compound in the catholyte after six hours' steady current. The anolyte became slightly yellow, and there was a considerable quantity of a fine blackish powder on the bottom of the beaker and on the anode. There was also a sediment of white powder. The black powder was found to be metallic copper, due to the disintegration of the anode. The white powder was cuprous chloride. No chlorine was evolved during the electrolysis. The anolyte gave a white precipitate of cuprous chloride on addition of water; with sodium hydroxide solution it gave a yellow precipitate of cuprous hydroxide; with ammonium hydroxide it gave a gradually deepening blue coloration on shaking in the air. It appears, therefore, that the copper goes into solution as complex anions, and as excess of hydrochloric acid is present these are the ions corresponding to H2CuCl3. Reprint of selected papers from the Kew Bulletin, Additional Series II. A Paper read before the Faraday Society, October 19, 1915. As the CuCl was formed towards the end of the electro-These various experiments can be apparently reconciled ysis it may be that this reaction is represented by by not accepting the doctrine of an æther, or at least by CuCl” — CuCl+2Cl. leaving it out of account, and introducing the principle of relativity, but before coming to this theory it will be desirable to reconsider the last experiment cited. An alternative explanation would be that CuCl is ormed directly from the chloridion and the copper anode, and that this dissolves without dissociation in the hydrochloric acid present until a saturated solution is formed, when there is precipitation of CuCl on the bottom of the beaker as the electrolysis proceeds. In order to test this latter hypothesis the following experiment was made, Starting with pure concentrated hydrochloric acid and a clean copper anode the electrolysis was performed for six hours with a steady current of 05 ampère. Then the current was stopped, but all other conditions, including the stirring, were maintained the same as when the current was passing. After three hours the catholyte was examined and it was found that some of the copper compound in the anolyte had diffused into the catholyte. Prof. Wood, in his book "Physical Optics," 1914, p. 675 (Macmillan), remarks:-"It is obvious that the failure of the earth's motion to influence in any way phenomena occurring in optical systems located wholly upon the earth are at once explained if we assume that the velocity of light is influenced by the motion of the source, i.e., if the velocities are additive, as would be the case in the corpuscular theory, for, in this case, the moving_observer would remain at the centre of the wave. [corpuscular] hypothesis has never been seriously considered, for it is incompatible with the wave-theory." The idea of added velocities is clear if it be assumed that the light pulse partakes of the movement of the light source. It is interesting to note that if the æther does not exist, a corpuscular-like theory of light is ap This could not have been prevented for six hours by the passage of the current unless the copper had been presentparently necessary. as complex anion. If the electrolysis was continued after some of the copper compound had diffused into the catholyte, copper was at once deposited on the cathode. This was due to the complex copper compound being reduced by the hydrogen at the cathode. INTRODUCTION TO THE THEORY OF THE Michelson-Morley famous experiment, devised to detect any relative motion between the earth and the supposed æther, consisted briefly in passing a beam of light into a system of ordinary mirrors and a partly reflecting, partly transmitting plate, the light being directed in such a way that, in one orientation of the apparatus, the supposed æther (if not moving with the earth) would allow the aberration effect to take place, and give rise to interference phenomenon with another beam, which has travelled in the same system in a direction uninfluenced * FIG. 3. This Returning to the ball analogy, and imagining things arranged to resemble in part the Michelson-Morley apparatus, the thrower of the ball may be considered as standing on a stationary platform car at one side. At the other side of the car a target is provided. Suppose that when the ball is thrown it will strike the target in a central spot A. Now suppose the car to be under uniform motion along a straight track. If the ball be again thrown with precision as before it will strike the spot A again. No aberrational effect has taken place. This is an imperfect representation of the light experiment in its entirety, but it will perhaps help to fix the idea of a moving source and light-pulse, considered as a sort of quantum, moving in (or with) what might be termed a self-contained system, or remaining in the centre of the wave. Prof. Wood goes on to say "In the last chapter we shall take up the whole matter from quite a new point of view, the theory of relativity, and it will be shown that from a certain point of view a moving source of light can be considered as remaining at the centre of the waves which it originates, which is all that we require." The difficulty encountered in the case of the MichelsonMorley experiment in reconciling it with the star aberration experiment has been tentatively removed by an ingenious suggestion that the apparatus contracts by a very minute amount along the direction of movement just sufficient to compensate the effect looked for due to the relative motion of the apparatus with respect to the supposed æther. This is known as the Lorenz-FitzGerald contraction hypothesis. This brings us now to the modern theory of relativity, and here too a most extraordinary conception is introduced that bids fair to have far-reaching consequences. Indeed, this theory is in some ways an extension of the great mathematical work of H. A. Lorentz, and H. Minskowski has adopted bodily Maxwell's classical equations in developing its exposition along rigorous mathematical lines involving the Lorentz transformation as developed in the electron theory. It may be stated at the outset that this new theory almost of necessity abolishes the æther. Attempts to retain or consider somehow the æther (or æthers) have nevertheless been made (see, for example, Cunningham, by the earth-movement. Fig. 3 shows the optical "The Principle of Relativity," 1914, Cambridge Universcheme. The entire apparatus was continuously rotated sity Press), but it does not appear that the idea of relain one experiment to interchange the functions of the parts, tivity coupled with that of an æther is consistent or necesand thus cancel out inevitable errors by giving a measur- sary. It may turn out that the conception of the æther able or net difference in the fringes, should the supposed will have to be modified in its interpretation so as to stand æther not move with the earth. The experimenters for some extended state of matter and thus reconcile conobtained negative results, however, pointing to the sup-flicting schools of thought. This idea does not really posed æther moving with the earth. The shift for a 90° mean anything, because it is not worked out. It is not rotation on the basis of a stationary æther should have intended here to discuss issues of this kind. On the conbeen quite appreciable, namely, four-tenths of a fringe trary, it is perhaps best to keep to the "orthodox" school width. This experiment is therefore in conflict with the of relativity, if this expression may be allowed. Quoting aberration one observed with the light from the star, from a review of Dr. Silberstein's work " Theory of which seemed to indicate that the æther was stationary. Relativity," 1914, in Science Progress, January, 1915:— |