Word: balsa
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...South Seas to the Americas. But Heyerdahl decided that the trickle must have moved in the opposite direction. Ancient Peru, even during the Tiahuanaco period (about 1,000 A.D., before the start of the Inca Empire), was far more civilized than Polynesia. The Peruvians built large rafts of balsa wood which were probably capable of voyaging as far as the South Seas. The prevailing winds and the ocean currents (both moving from east to west-see map) would help them make the one-way trip...
Last week, the balsa was almost ready to sail. Named the Kon-Tiki after a Peruvian god, she is 40 ft. long, 18 ft. wide, built of buoyant balsa wood logs cut in the jungles of Ecuador. There is no metal in her; all parts are lashed together with ropes, as the ancient Peruvians...
...voyage to Tahiti, Heyerdahl estimates, will take about 140 days. The Peru current will carry the balsa northward up the coast. Then the east wind and the "south equatorial current" will waft it across the Pacific. For entertainment while they drift, the Norwegians are taking along a guitar...
With the river valley his only market, Clayton first floated oil drums downstream to Iquitos as rafts tied together with vines and buoyed by balsa logs. Later he got barges, now has river tankers. During the war he sold gasoline, kerosene and fuel oil as far down the river as Manaus...
...soft, whitish metal, like silvery cheese, lithium is not only the lightest metal but the lightest known solid: it will float on gasoline. (Cork and balsa wood only seem lighter: they are pocketed with air.) Long known in the laboratories for its instability, lithium tarnishes almost instantly in air, decomposes water at ordinary temperatures. It owes its new usefulness to this chemical alacrity, and to the dogged research of a small company (The Lithium Co., Newark, N.J.) which now has some big customers...