SOME UNUSUAL STUDENT PROJECTS

ORVILLE S. WALTERS, GARBER, OKLAHOMA

Toilet Preparations

In nearly all high-school chemistry groups there are students who are planning to pursue either medicine or pharmacy. A number of novel projects suggest themselves which will prove very interesting to these students and others as well. One such group of projects is that of mak- ing pharmaceutical preparations on a limited scale. The "Scientific American Cyclopedia of Formulas" is.a valuable guide in preparing many

of the simpler articles. Under "Toilet Preparations'' may he found formulas and procedure for making a large variety of staple drug-store commodities. Some of these which have been successfully prepared by stu- dents are cold creams of various types, shampoos, hair tonics, mouth washes, hair oil, Listerine, smelling salts, toilet water, and tooth powder. The simplicity of such preparations is nearly always a surprise to the student.

0 . v Almost no apparatus is required, and the ingredients can usually be obtained a t a well-stocked drug store.

Patent Medicines

FIGURE 1 The patent medicine traffic is

deserving of student investiga- tion. The amazing composition of many common nostrums is generally a revelation. It is frequently possible for the student to duplicate these pro- prietary remedies, particularly in cases where their composition is simple. "Nostrums and Quackery" in two volumes, published by the AmericanMed- ical Association (Chicago) gives the ingredients of a large number of such preparations, as do also the reports of the American Medical Association's chemical laboratory. Some projects which may be worked out are: the duplication of common patent medicines, with comparative cost of the genuine and its imitation; the making of posters hearing original packages and calling attention to exaggerations; the making of panels bearing ad- vertisements from current publications, showing false claims of remedies, and accompanied by reported analyses; the analysis in laboratory of the

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alcoholic content of patent medicines. A large number of patent medi- cines adapt themselves quite readily to duplication in the average labora- tory. Among these may be mentioned the followine well-known names:

I)~GURE 2.-SAND GRAINS FROM HIGHER LEVEL OF AN OIL WELL

" Absorbine, Jr., Sloan's Liniment, Orchard White, Othine, Freezone, Vick's Vap-O-Rub, Mentholaturn, Dr. Miles' Newine, Sal Hepat- ica, Pluto Water, Mum, Canthrox, and Dan- derine, all of which will be found described fully in :'Nostrums and Quackery."

Photography

The study of photography always affords as a project the technic of aeveloping and printing negatives. However, the interest of this may be enhanced by providing novel sub- jects for picture-taking.

Subjects. A few of these may be mentioned, though some of them are fairly well known. Moonlight pictures, made by long exposures,

~ - . . one to seven hours in length; outdoor pictures taken by flood- or arc- lights, also made by long exposures; silhouettes made by flashlight; photographs taken directly upon a piece of sensitive paper by longer exposure; successive photographs of the moon on the same film to show movement; pictures of lightning made by opening camera during a night thunderstorm until a brilliant flash; the making of double exposures showing a person or object twice in the same picture by covering one side of the lens while the first ex- posure is made, then the other half of the lens for exposing the corresponding side of the negative. "Kodakery" and the various pam- phlets distributed by Eastman Kodak Co., suggest many more out-of-the-ordinary uses for a camera.

"Sairit-ahotoeraahs" attracted considerable " " . attention a few years ago. These were usually

FrcmE 3.-SAND GRAINS ordinary portraits in which one or more "spirit" LOmR LEVEL AN

faces had been caused to appear. This may on, WELL be readily accomplished by the amateur. The "spirit" face may be taken on the negative first, after which the actual portrait is made, or, better still, the "spirit" face or faces may be printed on the sensitive paper from their negatives, the portrait then being printed

360 JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION FBBR~ARY, 1930

over it from another negative. Or, one negative or portion of film may be superimposed upon another in a single printing with the same effect. An interesting chapter on this subject, accompanied by several illus- trations, may be found in H. Carrington's "The Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism" (Small, Maynard).

Printing. A few unusual devices may be used in the printing of pic- tures. The use of odd-shaped masks can be endlessly varied to give dif-

ferent margins. Pictures can be given a strik- ing canvas effect by placing a thin handker- chief or cloth between the negative and the glass of the printing frame. A simple method by which the amateur may retouch is to make a negative of the print by treating it with a thin oil to give transparency, retouching to taste with crayon, then using this "negative" as any other in printing.

Photmicrography on a small scale may be performed by the novice in an extremely simple way. The microscope is focused in the usual way and the lens of the camera is applied to - -

Fraune d . - S n ~ o GRAINS the eyepiece, the camera focus being set a t muM Lowm LEvBL Or AN "infinity." With a 100-watt frosted bulb and OIL WELL

reflector as illumination, placed a t a distance of six inches from the stage of the micrq~icope, an exposure of twenty-five to fifty seconds with a diaphragm aperture of sixteen is given. This method affords an interesting procedure for the study of crystals. The accompanying photographs were made through a fifteen-dollar micro- scope magnifying thirty times (Figure 1). The objects shown are grains of sand from two different levels in an oil well. For light crystals against a dark background (Figure 3) a thin piece of red paper is interposed a t R (Figure 1). For dark crystals against a light background (Figure 4), the shade is placed in position A (Figure 1).

Iceberg Detection. Howard T. Barnes of McGill University, Montreal, Canada, reports that one of the interesting results of the Van Home expedition just returned from iceberg study on the Atlantic was obtained with the submarine microphone de- tector. Very loud deep noises were heard three miles from an iceberg and hecame faint a t sin miles.

These noises are apparently due to the cracking under water of the iceberg, and they could readily be heard above the usual ship's noises. The succession of cracks was irregular, running from 11 to 68 a minute. The effect is so characteristic that it is proposed to extend the investigation in the hope of finding a method of iceberg detec- tion.- Nature