VOL 7, No. 9
RESEARCH PROBLEMS OF INSTRUCTION
2157
PIETER~. H. A. J., "Practical Chemistry for Beginners," 3, 876-87 (Aug., 1926). REPORTof the Secretary of the Division of Chemical Education. 4, 1406-13 (Nov., 1927). SCHWARTZ. A,. "Chemistry as Material in Vocational Adjustment," 4, 973-5 (Aug., 1927). SCOFIELD,MAUDEB., "An Experiment in Predicting Performance in General Chemistry," 4, 116875 (Sept.. 1927). STONE,C n a n ~ E sH., "A Little Talk about Energy," 4, 630-7 (May, 1927). STOUT,LAWRENCE EDWARD,"The Selective Value of Powers' General Chemical Tcst, Scale 'A'," 3, 113&43 (Oct., 1920). WILLIAMS, ROGERJ., "Ionization and the Atomic Structure Theory in Organic Chemistry," 4, 867-71 (July, 1927).
Behavior of Catalyst Studied by Chemists. Catalysts, the go-betweens that promote all sorts of fruitful and profitable chemical matchmaking in modern laboratories and factories, without themselves becoming parts of the compounds they help to create, have had their own hitherto mysterious character looked into lately. At the Atlanta Meeting of the American Chemical Society, Prof. Arthur F. Benton and T.. A. White, of the University of Virginia, reported on some new things they have learned about the way catalysts act, especially at very low temperatures. They worked with finely divided nickel. which is one of the most widely used of catalysts, and hydraaen, one of the commonest of industrial gases, a t temperatures ranging as low as 220 desees below zero centigrade. The volumes of the gas adsorbed to the nickel under the conditions of the experiment led the chemists to the conclusion that adsorption takes place in two stapes. In the primary stage the metal sheathes itself in a layer of gas molecules to the thickness of one molecule. When this envelope is complete, the gas molecules are more highly "activated," that is, more ready to combine into new compounds, than a t any other time. Before the layer is complete, the catalyst may attract and hold patches of gas molecules, but they are too tightly held t o be available for combination purposes. After the layer is complete, other secondary layers may form outside it, but these appear to be less under the influence of the catalyst and are therefore more indifferent t o apportunities for farming combinations.-Sciace Service 100-Year Old Iron Puddling Gives Way to Machine. The man-powered puddling process of making wrought iron-the method used almost exclusively for the past hundred years of producing this tough, rust-resisting metal-is now giving way to the ingenuity of man and machine. Dr. James Aston, of the Carnegie Institute of Technology of Pittsburgh, has found a way ta make wrought iron in large quantities with machinery and his method is being applied commercially in the manufacture of pipe, the U. S. Bureau of Standards announces. For years the production of wrought iron exceeded that of steel. Then came the Bessemer process, and steel could be made so cheaply that it quickly replaced wrought iron for practically all purposes. Men had to make wrought iron by hand, slowly "puddle" it in a small reverberatory furnace. Metallurgists tried in vain to find a commercially successful mechanical method. Then Dr. Aston began to experiment in a mill a t Warren, Ohio. And the Bureau of Standards has found that his product equals wrought iron in practically every respect although it is made by an entirely different process Dr. Aston's wrought iron gets its fibrous slag structure by the pouring of Bessemcr purified pig iron into molten slag made in an open-hearth furnace. Excess slag is squeezed out by a hydraulic press.-Sdence Senmice ~
~
~
