Word: hydrogen
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Helium is the hardest of all gases to liquefy. The standard method involves liquid hydrogen, which is unstable and highly explosive. Kapitza's method not only did away with liquid hydrogen, but. cut the cost of making a quart from $50 to $5, the time from 24 hours to two hours or less. In the neighborhood of absolute zero, ordinary lubricants freeze hard as iron and Kapitza's problem was to find a lubricant for his compressor. He solved the problem by allowing a little helium vapor to squeeze through the piston clearance, so that the helium itself...
...inventive wizard named Peter Quill. Against the machinations of foreign agents he has thrown the resources of a laboratory that would startle even Jules Verne. He has discovered a substance called therminite which burns at 6,000 degrees, melts all metals, renders water explosive by breaking it down into hydrogen and oxygen. He has invented a delayed-action "explosive" which explodes so gradually that it can be used on sinking submarines to expel water and chlorine. He has devised a magnetic screen so powerful that when it is struck by bombs it shatters them to fragments. Last week...
...about 220° below zero F., and the outer planets-Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto-are even colder, which eliminates them as harborers of life. Moreover the atmospheres of the big planets contain great quantities of ammonia and methane, which are poisonous to earthly organisms. These substances are rich in hydrogen, lightest of gases and hence the most likely to escape from a planet's gravitational pull. The big planets are massive enough still to retain most of their original hydrogen, hence the ammonia and methane. The young earth locked up some useful hydrogen in water vapor and fortunately lost...
...difference between wood and oil is that wood is mostly carbohydrates (com posed of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen) whereas oil is mostly hydrocarbons (composed of carbon and hydrogen only). Chemically these two great classes of compounds behave very differently. But economically the really important difference between wood and oil is that wood-burning locomotives are obsolete, whereas oil-burning Diesel trains are the height of modernity...
...relatives of the syphilis spirochete, which first invade the gums, may later migrate to tonsils, salivary glands and lungs. Trench mouth is most prevalent in summertime when campers use common utensils and cups. To kill the trench mouth spirochete, doctors usually swab their patients' swollen gums with hydrogen peroxide, silver salts or arsphenamine, prescribe mouthwashes of sodium perborate. But such treatment usually lasts for many weeks...