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Slosson, Edwin E., 1865-1929

"Creative Chemistry Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries"

We Americans, if ever we give our assent
to such an agreement, would of course keep it, but our enemy--whoever he
may be in the future--will be, as he always has been, utterly without
principle and will not hesitate to employ any weapon against us.
Besides, as the Germans held, chemical warfare favors the army that is
most intelligent, resourceful and disciplined and the nation that stands
highest in science and industry. This advantage, let us hope, will be on
our side.


CHAPTER XIII
PRODUCTS OF THE ELECTRIC FURNACE

The control of man over the materials of nature has been vastly enhanced
by the recent extension of the range of temperature at his command. When
Fahrenheit stuck the bulb of his thermometer into a mixture of snow and
salt he thought he had reached the nadir of temperature, so he scratched
a mark on the tube where the mercury stood and called it zero. But we
know that absolute zero, the total absence of heat, is 459 of
Fahrenheit's degrees lower than his zero point. The modern scientist can
get close to that lowest limit by making use of the cooling by the
expansion principle.


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