474
INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
Ultra-Slow-Motion Photography as Applied to Chemical Engineering Studies
N
EWLY important basic facte about com mon chemical engineering operations are revealed by ultra-slow-motion^ photog raphy, according to Gustavus J.* Esselen and J. G. Hildebrand, of Gustavus J. Esselen, Inc., addressing the American Insti tute of Chemical Engineers, November 12, 1936, at the Hotel Baltimore, Baltimore. Md.
STEPS IN THE FORMATION OF IRREGULAR WATER DROPS DRIPPING PROM THE END OF Λ GLASS TUBE.
Note how the water appears viscous behind the drop and a second smaller drop follows the first
Knowledge of the way gases travel through liquids, or how stirring apparatus functions at high speed, may cut down the cost of paint, rayon, glass, and other indus trial and chemical products. Dr. Esselen and Dr. Hildebrand studied the performance of four types of beaters by putting a few drops of a dark liquid into water, and photographing the stirring with a special high-speed camera. When projected, the speed of the process is re duced to one-sixtieth of its normal rate. Under these conditions the ordinary double-cage egg-beater and a single-cage egg-beater proved very inefficient in low viscosity aqueous media. The blades simply cut through the water without accomplishing much in the way of agita tion. An agitator with a single flat blade did fairly well, but best was a propeller1)laded contrivance. At every revolution the propeller-type stirrer gave a "kick" to the black liquid being stirred. It was al most as if a distinct piece of the black liquid were cut off and moved upward, to be followed immediately by another piece. When a single puff of air is blown through water, the eye sees only one large, wabbly bubble rising to the top. The fastmotion camera sees not one bubble but several—usually a big one and some smaller ones hastening after it in rapid succession. But usually, before this bubble family reaches the top, the big bubble has swallowed most of the little ones. This is a matter of considerable im portance to chemists. If, for example, gas is to react with a liquid, a way must be found to bubble it through without the bubbles merging en route. Studies with a fast-motion camera, such as that used by Dr. Esselen, can show the proper way to make the reaction take place at maximum efficiency. The picture of a rubber band snapping proved a surprise. The snapping of an elastic band happens so quickly that the eye does not follow it, and the person hold ing the broken band feels only one stinging snap. The film showed the band snap ping not once, but three or four times. At the break, the ends flew rapidly to the fingers, bounced out several inches, flew back again, bounced out again, this time not so tar, and finally came to rest. Illustrating the industrial uses to which
high-speed photography might be put, Dr. Esselen showed movies of a stream of smoke passing through the blades of an ordinary electric fan, and one of the "si lent" kind. The smoke flew to pieces in f°ggy turbulence behind the blades of the noisy fan, revealing that the chief source of noise lay in the turbulence of the air chopped by the blades. There was no such turbulence behind the blades of the ι quiet fan. It had been quieted by shaping t he blades so that they cut the air evenly. I The bursting of a bottle by hydrostatic pressure was filmed in an effort to show where the initial crack formation begins in relation to stresses and strains within the bottle. Certain types of destructive ac tion, such as the bursting bottle, may be studied to advantage by reversing the aet ion of the film and reassembling the frag ments photographically on the screen. As t his bursting action occurs so rapidly, the filming process was completed in such a way that the disintegration appears to take place in steps rather than a continu ous now of action, in order that a more accurate study can be made. The way that bottles burst under pressure natu rally will yield information applicable to the design of pressure vessels of various kinds. Dr. Esselen told how photographic >tudies are used to improve heavy ma chines, such as punch presses, in which the operation is intermittent and of such a character that at one point in the cycle large amounts of energy are suddenly ap plied for a short space of time. In one such study the camera revealed that the heavy machine was actually lifted several inches off its base at each cycle, yet this motion had not even been suspected by the operators. In addition, a heavy sup porting beam, which the engineers be lieved incapable of distortion, was flexed several inches every time the energy was applied. Armed with this information, the engineers were able to re-design the machine so that it would not be subject to unexpected distortions. In ordinary motion picture cameras, the film is intermittently jerked past the camera lens, making froni 16 to 128 stops a second. Slow-motion pictures sometimes seen in the movie theater are taken at about 128 "frames" a second. But this is much too slow to catch the action of fast machinery or quick-acting natural phe nomena. The starting-stopping cycle limits the speed of such a camera to about 240 "frames" a second. Speeding faster than that will break the film. "Quite recently two different systems of photographic equipment have been de veloped which automatically eliminate the aforementioned limitations and which per mit the taking of 2000 or even 3000 ex posures per second under ideal conditions," related Dr. Esselen. One of these systems has been developed by Electrical Research Products, Inc., in con junction with the Eastman Kodak Co., while the credit for the second belongs to Harold E. Egerton and the General Radio Co. In both, the camera is stripped of all mechanical features necessary for imparting an inter mittent movement to the film. In place of this complex mechanism there is substituted in the Egerton-General Radio camera a large, direct-driven sprocket which pulls the film, from a supply reel, past an aperture plate which is placed behind the lens. A second reel, also directly driven from a motor, winds up the exposed film as fast as it leaves the drive sprocket. Thus, the film moves in a continuous uninterrupted flow which permits greatly accelerated film speeds, resulting in a
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14, N O . 23
large increase in the number of pictures taken each second. In this camera, the intermittent effect necessary to produce a series of distinct pictures is obtained b y flashing a light synchronously with the film. The light is furnished by a mercury vapor tube, which, unlike ordinary electric lamps, has no lag or afterglow when the current is shut off. It is possible t o take sharp, clear pic· tures of objects moving as rapidly as 500 feet per second, or nearly 6 miles a minute. When projected on a screen at the normal rate, the motion appears t o be slowed down to about 4 feet per second, or 3 miles an hour, which is normal walking speed. The camera used b y Dr. Esselen and Dr. Hildebrand is one of the EgertonGeneral Radio type. As an added refine ment, it has a special set of lenses made of fused quartz instead of glass. Since fused quartz transmits ultraviolet light, while glass does not, this improvement permits the camera to make use of the invisible rays of light given off b y the lamp. Hence, it produces better, sharper pictures.
Abbot A. Hanks, Inc.
T
HIS year the firm of Abbot A. Hanks, Inc., celebrates its seventieth anniver sary. In 1866 Henry G. Hanks estab lished in San Francisco a laboratory for general assay and chemical work and the name and business have been carried on continuously since that time in San Fran cisco, with the exception of eleven months following the earthquake and fire of 1906, when offices were temporarily located in Oakland. Coming to California in 1852, Henry G. Hanks engaged in several lines of work, in cluding the manufacture of paints and of fine chemicals and reagents. He built one of the first borax refineries in Califor nia, taking crude borax obtained from the borax springs at Clear Lake and produc ing a refined product. His interest always centered in minerals and metals and re sulted in the establishment of one of the earliest custom assay offices and chemical laboratories in California. His son, Ab bot Α., joined him about 1887, and on the retirement of the elder Hanks the business was transferred t o him and placed in his name in 1896. In 1917 it was decided to add to the older lines engineering inspection and testing. In 1924 the firm was incorpo rated and a number of the older employees were given an interest in the corporation. The firm occupies its own building on Sacramento Street, in which are installed laboratories and equipment for the assay and analysis of ores, minerals, metals, and metal products for general inorganic analy sis, and for the testing of cement, ag gregates, steel, and building materials. The firm specializes in the sampling of ores, mining and mineral products at smelter, warehouse, or ship side, and in the inspection and sampling of cement, concrete, aggregates, and steel at mill, warehouse, or job. Beginning in a small way with the per sonal work of the founder and a boy helper, the firm now employs a regular force of 25 people, most of them technically trained, and supplements this b y representatives at smelters, cement plants, and steel mills all over the Pacific Coast. Through its af filiates in eastern and southern cities, a general inspection service is afforded throughout the United States.
D E C E M B E R 10, 1936
NEWS EDITION
4?5
Edward B a u s c h Honored
of electrolytes at moderate concentrations are accounted for by developing the idea that each ion in a solution is surrounded by an oppositely charged "ion atmosphere" which is the net result of Coulomb forces between the ions and the thermal vibrations. Extensions of the theory deal with irrevers ible properties.
E shared honors on the evening of December 1, when t h e American Society DWARD
BAUSCH
and
Henry
Ford
of Mechanical Engineers made its annual awards for distinguished service in e n gineering and science, and "for great and unique acts of an engineering nature that have accomplished a great and timely benefit t o the public." Dr. Bausch received the A. S. M . E . Medal and Mr. Ford the Holley Medal, the former established in 1920' and the latter in 1923. The A . S . M . E . Medal is awarded once a year, "and that only for inventions and improvements of great merit in the technical and public sense." Among the previous recipients have been Hjalmar Gotfried Carlson, Robert A. Millikan, Ambrose Swasey, and other dis tinguished contributors to the progress of engineering. In his long and notable career, which be gins with the construction of his first microscope in 1872, Dr. Bausch has been a constant contributor to engineering prog ress, which is partially indicated by some 40 patents. At 83 years of age, he is still on the job every day, working with asso ciates in the solution of their most knotty problems. His latest work, which he snares with other members of the Scientific Bureau, is the design of a new instru ment of great utility in industry, called the "Contour Measuring Projector." The new instrument is proving itself a valuable inspection device in many types of manu facturing, particularly for those whose product is composed of small irregular parts, difficult or impossible to check ac curately by the present mechanical means. It is both a microscope and a projection apparatus of the highest quality and great accuracy with which a highly magnified image of such parts as screw threads, gears, dies, hobs, gages, and shapers may be profiled upon a screen or chart for study ana comparison. Dr. Bausch has been active in the opti cal industry since entering his company's service in 1874, immediately upon leaving Cornell University. As an able aide t o his father, John J. Bausch, he is credited with the great expansion of the industry in the United States because of his introduction of new technical methods and machine processes t o compete with the cheaper hand labor of Europe. In 1876 he was in charge of the Bausch & Lomb exhibit at the Philadelphia Cen tennial, where he had an opportunity to meet many visiting microscopists and to study the construction and performance of instruments sent over bv the leading firms of Europe. Placed in charge of the ruling machine exhibit of William H. Rogers, adjoining his own, he acquired his first ex perience in making rulings on glass. On one of his trips to Europe, in 1891, he met Ernst Abbe at Jena, and established the friendly contact which ultimately led to a cooperative working agreement be tween Carl Zeiss and Bausch & Lomb. Mr. Bausch has for many years been a Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society, having wide acquaintance with workers in this field in both Europe and the United iStates. He was present at the first meet ing of the American Microscopical Society, in Indianapolis, in 1878. On his first visit to London, in 1888, he was entertained by Frank Crisp, secretary of the Royal Micro scopical Society, where he met Baker, Beck, Crouch, Powell, and Leland Ross. On t h e Continent he visited Reichert, Goerz, Leitz, and Zeiss. The membership of Mr. Bausch in the American Association for the Advance ment of Science covers a period of 59 years. He is also a member of tne Optical Society
4.
EDWARD BAUSCH
of America, Rochester Engineering So ciety, Rochester Historical Society, and the Archaeological Institute of America. Not content with his own efforts in building u p the optical industry, Mr. Bausch has been conscious of the necessity of educational work to perpetuate his labors. This explains his interest in the establishment of the Institute of Optics, as a part of t h e Physics Department of the University of Rochester and the construc tion of the Bausch et me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, chemists are responsible, chemists who have imported into our fair land the dicta torial ideas of Mendele'ev and of Avogadro and of Liebig. This must not go on. You cannot expect a n y help from the bureau crats in Washington. Everybody knows that the gods of the Mills Building grind slowly. Only local action can save us from burning our bridges before we come to them with our eyes closed. It is not enough to have a Division of the History of Chemistry. We must have a Division of the Future of Chemistry, and I hereby declare that this is it. The next speaker will be one who needs no introduction. Introduction B Y THE OKACLE
Ladies and Gentlemen: It is a great privilege and a great honor to address the inaugural meeting of the Division of the Future of Chemistry. You may have expected to see astrolabes and sextants, velvet drapes and dim lights, oriental costumes and incense, and the other hocus-pocus usually associated with my trade. The soi-disant fortune tellers who pretend to read the future in stars, or clouds, or tea leaves, in the lines of a hand or the intestines of a goat would no doubt attempt to delude you with such apparatus. 1 am sure you realize, however, that the great gods who alone can know the future will not stoop t o stack cards or push stupid planchettes over silly boards. When approached humbly and submis sively, however, they sometimes will reveal portions of the future in ways more suitable to their dignity. The school to which I belong presents its mind to the gods a s a blank page for them to write upon. In these modern days this is usually done either in the trance of the true medium» or in the semi-trance of a crystal sphere. It seems appropriate tonight, however, that I should revive the method of chemical stupor made fa mous by my illustrious predecessors at Delphi. The later history of this oracle mentions smoke from a crevice in the temple floor. T h e vague reports we have of its more brilliant earlier days speak of an herb growing in the neighborhood, and a clear, cold spring in the temple yard. My archeological friends differ somewhat in their reconstructions from these frag ments, their suggestions ranging from a Tom Collins to a mint julep. I have there fore had to rely somewhat upon my own judgment in filling this bowl, and I am happy to observe that the desired chemical stupor is now nearly complete. The next voice you hear will have come to you from high Olympus.
T h e Future o f Chemistry B Y THE GODS
No longer need the miner slave In pits that blasts may make his grave, For now bacteria are sent Where heretofore the miner went; They change the coal to gasoline And pumps remove what they ferment, Until at last the mine contains No deadly damps or sooty stains But only high-grade dustiess coke That miners mine who carry canes. * ο * No more need any doctor treat AS measles what is prickly heat, Nor in a fever fail to see The early symptoms of T. B. And docs on Greenland's icy heights Can not be stumped by tse-tse bites, Nor those on India's coral strands By maladies of colder lands. Electron wave diffractions show The structure of diffractors; so Each germ and virus man is heir to Must sign its name though it don't care to. Though men still die, as God has willed, They now can know by what they're killed.
* «* No more the droughts of August parch The optimistic wheat of March, No more can thermometric drop Destroy a budding citrus crop, And no more gayly blooming cotton needs to wonder If it will die by weevil or by plowing under. Now Eastman makes all kinds of cakes As well as bread, of course; At Midland, Dow supplants the cow; Of mutton, Merck's the source; The plum and lemon Allied Chem Efficiently produces And Standard Oil on eastern soil Makes orange and grapefruit juices. You can buy synthetic turkey or broccoli or kale And International Nickel has a good cigar for sale. The farm and farmer are no more, forgot ten but for tales man Still tells about the farmer's daughter and the traveling salesman.
* ** In alloys, where one seeks for weightless strength The final triumph was achieved at length. The stainless steels enjoyed a fleeting dayMarless magnesium came, they passed away. And then one morning all the world was thanking A youthful chemist resident in Nanking For alloys than which there can be no lighter, Called "Lustless Lithium" by some head line writer.
* ** No more need helpless infants cry For lack of words to specify They're stuck by pin or racked by colic Or want a drink or want to frolic. No more need Dane confronting Greek In clumsy gestures try to speak Or Greek in Jersey wanting Flit Be pained to have no word for it Or suspect whom the G-men hector Risk life upon a He detector. For every thought within a brain Was found to generate a train Of waves that amplified are carriers Of thought unbarred by language barriers. By the time you swear you're his. Shivering and sighing, And he vows his passion is
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Infinite, undying. Lady, make a note of this. One of you is lying. These lines from Dorothy Parker's pen Suggest why, though in reach, This great invention, now and then, Is not preferred to speech.
* »»
No longer any chemist stews Ingredients I do not choose To mention Or vainly tries to crystallize An oil of most contrariwise Intention. In every lab the cobwebs grow And bats assemble, row on row, Unheeded; The beaker and the bath of sand By not one chemist in the land Are needed. No distillations any more Are made as in the times of yore They once were; Podbielniaks you used to do Will be most damning proof that you A dunce were. Experiment would leave a smirch Upon the brainier research Devices Of men who find the power of mind For seeking facts of any kind Suffices. When asked would some new resin check When old, or what its dielec tric losses They write d psi d χ d u And promptly send the answer to Their bosses. Or should they wish to synthesize A special line of azo dyes Enow to Write a square b square gamma and Without a stain on either hand Know how to. This paradise of pen and pencil, Unmarred by any lab utensil, Still has the blemish that one can't Use an equation for a plant. To make a profit the sine qua non Is something to make a profit on And sad but true, as all will grant, To make that something takes a plant. Though the highest math of a master mind Invents the process, still you'll find That an engineer with a slide-rule slant Is the only man who can run the plant. mm m No longer anxious fathers pace Where helpless man seems out of place ; The future propagates the race A way I know no name for. In vitro, modern embryos Their parents to no risk expose And they in turn are safe from those That parents are to blame for. Though not the sort that money's spent for, Whene'er the incubator's sent for She does the thing that she is meant for, The angels do no more. She has no shape she wants to stick with, No nerves to feel an infant's kick with, And filled a baby or a chick with Will not her lot deplore. The babe, by sterile glass protected, Its food by Lindbergh pump injected, Which none approach undisinfected, Lies where no ill can fret it, Till grown as strong as bull or ox It is delivered like a box Unless its ultra-orthodox Fond father comes to get it. The child, not merely bottle-fed But bottle-born and bottle-bred, Who finds within hie curly head A budding intellect And asks the question, "Whence came I?" Though put off with some cabbage lie Is sure to find out, by-and-by, His parents bottle-necked.
