"Platinum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the volcano of Popocatapetl, is bought up at the mint in the city of Mexico, where it is burned in a room lined with lead, and into which water is jetted until the smoke of the burning brimstone is condensed. This water of sulphur is then carefully collected, and distilled in a boiler of platinum, on which sulphur can not act. The sulphuric acid obtained by this distillation is used to separate the gold that is found in the silver bars from silver. This sometimes amounts to ten per cent. The acid ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... find a soft woman's corpse. Glowing blue snows cast a howling darkness. On high poles a scarecrow, implored, hangs. Stores flicker dimly through frosted windows, In front of which human bodies move like ghosts. Students carve a frozen girl. How lovely, the crystalline winter evening burning! A platinum moon now streams through a gap in the houses. Next to green lanterns under a bridge Lies a gypsy woman. And plays ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... while along the high road, then turned off into the woods, where the rhododendron was massed thick. Here there was more of the velvet shadow and less of the direct moonlight, but through the open spaces that, too, fell in filtering patterns of platinum brightness. ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... rough-and-ready apparatus for testing any mineral encountered. A blowpipe, a bit of candle, a small bottle of powdered borax, another of mercury, and a bent platinum wire, packed away in an empty jam-tin, formed his assayer's kit—a paraphernalia which induced as much mirth and scoffing contempt from Palmer Billy as it would have done from a skilled and cultured scientist, ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... hydrochloric acid. When the zinc is brushed over with this mixture it oxidizes the surface, turns black, and dries in from twelve to twenty-four hours, and may then be painted over without any danger of peeling. Another and more quickly applied coating consists of, bi-chloride of platinum, 1 part dissolved in 10 parts of distilled water, and applied either by a brush or sponge. It oxidizes at once, turns black, and resists the weak acids, ...
— Handbook on Japanning: 2nd Edition - For Ironware, Tinware, Wood, Etc. With Sections on Tinplating and - Galvanizing • William N. Brown
... compass, and removing the cover set out upon the table an instrument that was entirely enclosed in vulcanized rubber. On the top, under glass, was a dial, with a little needle which vibrated violently, but came to a standstill soon after being placed on the table. Two small platinum wires, about twelve inches long and carefully insulated, issued from opposite sides ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... System, nor have I any desire to rule over, or to control the destinies of masses of futile and brainless men. I have, however, certain ends of my own in view. To accomplish my plans I require hundreds of millions in gold, other hundreds of millions in platinum and noble metal, and some five kilograms of the bromide of radium—all of which I shall take from the planets of this Solar System before I leave it. I shall take them in spite of the puerile efforts of the fleets of your ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... there is an immense quantity of heat in the Earth's interior. Near the surface the temperature increases at the average of 1 degrees Centigrade for every 30 meters of depth. If this rate were maintained we should at 60 km. in depth arrive at a temperature high enough to melt platinum, the most refractory of the known metals. What the law of temperature-increase at great depths is we do not know, but the temperature of the Earth's deep interior must ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... the spasms of pain of a perfectionist wounded by imperfection. It was his glorious unwisdom that caused him, at a rehearsal not long ago, to fling a platinum watch to the floor, where, of course, it was ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... (uncoined gold). Associated words: alchemist, alchemy, auriferous, alloy, assay, assayer, assaying, filigree, aurated, auric, aureate, aurific, aurigraphy, aurivorous, aurocephalous, platinum, aurous, billet, carat, chlorination, chrysography, cupel, foil, cupellation, gild, orphrey, vermeil, gilded, gilding, gilt, orris, amalgamated, goldsmith, bonanza, schlich, inaurate, inauration, ingot, lingot, lode, nugget, ore, ormolu, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... vessel, c, we do not expect the glass to change them, unless a or b or the compound a b has the power of dissolving the glass. But if for a I take oxygen, for b hydrogen, and for c a piece of spongy platinum, I find the first two combine with the common signs of combustion and form water, the third in the mean time undergoing no perceptible change. It has played the part of the unwedded priest, who marries a pair without taking a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... oil, gas, gold, copper, iron and perhaps mercury; Biliram, sulphur only; Leyte, coal, oil and perhaps mercury; Cebu, coal, oil, gas, gold, lead, silver and iron; Mindanao, coal, gold, copper and platinum; ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... precept; invisible, every buckle, snap, clasp, strap, wheel, axle, wedge, pulley, lever, and every other mechanical device known to science, was in place and of the best. As to adornment, all in good taste—scarfpin, an unpretentious pearl in platinum; garnet links, severely plain and quiet; an unobtrusive watch-chain; one ring, a ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... kind of ink for zinc is also used, made of chloride of platinum, five grains, dissolved in one ounce of distilled or rain water; but the first, which is much less expensive, answers perfectly, if used as directed, ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... No. 10 wire, the conduit may be sufficient to permit the caloric to pass without increasing the molecular velocity of the metal to an appreciable degree, but if we cut the No. 10 wire and insert a piece of No. 40 platinum wire in the path, the amount of caloric flowing through the No. 10 wire cannot pass through the No. 40 wire, and the resistance so caused increases the molecular velocity of the No. 40 wire to such degree as to exhibit the phenomenon of incandescence, and this is the incandescent ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... of the surface of a body has considerable influence on its power of absorbing light. Platinum black, for instance, in which the metal is in a state of fine division, absorbs nearly all the light incident on it, while polished platinum reflects the greater part. In the former case the light penetrating between the particles is ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... her vast resources gold, silver, platinum, quicksilver, copper, lead, zinc, iron, tin, graphite, crystal, alabaster, corundum, chrysolites, tourmalines, garnets, diamonds, and other gems. Montana had most largely contributed to this departmental structure, and inclosed her display of precious metals in a temple adorned ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... smokeless flame was required for the new laboratory at Heidelberg. Other appliances invented by him were the ice-calorimeter (1870), the vapour calorimeter (1887), and the filter pump (1868), which was worked out in the course of a research on the separation of the platinum metals. Mention must also be made of another piece of work of a rather different character. Travelling was one of his favourite relaxations, and in 1846 he paid a visit to Iceland. There he investigated ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... on his fingers, he smiled. "You examine my valuables, monsieur. They are of three metals, gold, platinum, and silver. This ring bears a scorpion, the sign under which I was born. That with its two accoupled triangles, one pointing downward and the other upward, reproduces the image of the macrocosm, the seal of Solomon, ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... herself at meal-times. She smoked—it was a new fashion of which Lady O'Gara did not altogether approve—a cigarette now and again and Terry supplied the gold-tipped, scented kind which Eileen took from a cigarette case of platinum with her name in turquoise at the corner. The cigarette case was a new possession. Lady O'Gara supposed that it came from Terry. She had not asked. A violet scent, so good that on its first introduction Lady O'Gara had ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... degrees at the centre of the earth. Therefore, all the substances that compose the body of this earth must exist there in a state of incandescent gas; for the metals that most resist the action of heat, gold, and platinum, and the hardest rocks, can never be either solid or liquid under such a temperature. I have therefore good reason for asking if it is possible to ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... ways, by passing the cloth over a red-hot copper plate, or over a red-hot revolving copper cylinder, or through a coke flame, or through gas flames, and more recently over a rod of platinum made ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... battle whose names figured in the "Book of Honor" of the Gun Club; and of those who made good their return the greater proportion bore the marks of their indisputable valor. Crutches, wooden legs, artificial arms, steel hooks, caoutchouc jaws, silver craniums, platinum noses, were all to be found in the collection; and it was calculated by the great statistician Pitcairn that throughout the Gun Club there was not quite one arm between four persons and ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... in Ceylon. And neither gold nor platinum appears to occur in noteworthy quantity in the ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... Burns." The face of a platinum-blonde beauty appeared on the screen beside Jones'. "And am I glad to see you, Barbara, even if I did just meet you yesterday! I didn't know whether I'd ever see another ...
— Subspace Survivors • E. E. Smith
... the symmetrical shapes, such as the cube or regular octahedron. It affords a resplendent polish, and may be exposed to the atmosphere for any length of time, without suffering any change; it is remarkable for its beauty; is nineteen times heavier than water, and, next to platinum, the heaviest known substance; its malleability is such, that a cubic inch will cover thirty-five hundred square feet; its ductility is such, that a lump of the value of four hundred dollars could be drawn into a wire which would extend around the globe. It is first mentioned in Genesis ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... confide, helped me. We found in the two-inch sole of the left shoe, which of course he did not take with him, a hollow place, a very serviceable receptacle. In it was the bulk of the missing Withers jewelry, the stones unset, pried from their gold and platinum settings. ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... used in analytical chemistry range from 20 grams to 5 milligrams. The weights from 20 grams to 1 gram are usually of brass, lacquered or gold plated. The fractional weights are of German silver, gold, platinum or aluminium. The rider is of platinum ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... simultaneously tossed up by the catapults, and thus drop and sphere begin to fall at the same moment. Before, however, the drop reaches the surface on which it is to impinge, the timing sphere strikes a plate D attached to one end of a third lever pivoted at Q, and thus breaks the contact between a platinum wire bound to the underside of this lever and another wire crossing the first at right angles. This action breaks an electric current which has traversed a second electro-magnet F (Fig. 2), and releases ...
— The Splash of a Drop • A. M. Worthington
... I can say is the furniture ought to be solid gold for that; inlaid with rubies and picked out with platinum." ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... the "goldsmiths" were also jewellers and gem dealers, and often money-lenders as well. The settings of the finest precious stones were at that time generally of gold, rarely of silver. Platinum, the metal that now enjoys the greatest furore for diamond settings, was then unknown in Europe; it was first brought to Europe in 1735, from South America, having been found in the alluvial deposits of the river Pinto, in the district of Choco, now forming part of the United States of Colombia. ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz
... determined to be by modern chemistry. And what are now the great problems of chemistry? The difference of the metals themselves, their origin, the causes of their locations, of their co-existence in the same ore—as, for instance, iridium, osmium, palladium, rhodium, and iron with platinum. Were these problems solved, the results who dare limit? In addition to the 'mechanique celeste', we might have a new department of astronomy, the 'chymie celeste', that is, a philosophic astrology. And to this ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... metal[EN9], supposed to contain antimony[EN10] and platinum, was brought for examination by Captain R. F. Burton. It was submitted to analysis, and found to be iron and combined carbon, or white cast-iron, containing small quantities of lead, copper, and silver, and free from antimony, platinum, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... go without tea," said the girl. "Besides,"—she glanced at a little platinum watch on her wrist,—"there's not another train until six. There is no need for you to start yet. I don't like being left alone. Mother has one of her headaches, and Horace and Dr. Romain have gone to Stevenish. Come ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... to be the case ('Untersuchungen ber die Abwartskrmmung der Wurzel,' 1871, p. 28) after burning with heated platinum one side of a radicle. So did we when we painted longitudinally half of the whole length of 7 radicles, suspended over water, with a thick layer of grease, which is very injurious or even fatal to growing parts; for after 48 hours five of these ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... with hydrogen in the presence of platinum black, and ethylene and then ethane result. It was hoped at one time that this reaction would lead to the manufacture of alcohol from acetylene being achieved on a commercial basis; but it was found that it did not proceed with sufficient smoothness for the process to ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... thought of the swimming, dancing, tennis-playing city men of good summer resorts, an impression enhanced by his sleek corn-silk hair and small, pale mustache. His clothes came from London, his watch-chain was a thin line of platinum and gold, his cigarette-case of silver engraved in inconspicuous bands—a modest and sophisticated cigarette-case, which he had possessed long enough to forget that he had it. He was apparently too much the easy, well-bred, rather inexperienced ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... assent, and instantly the Forest glade was deserted. But in a place midway between the earth and the sky was suspended a gleaming crypt of gold and platinum, aglow with soft lights shed from the facets of countless gems. Within a high dome hung the precious Mantle of Immortality, and each immortal placed a hand on the hem of the splendid Robe and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum
... his examination ended upon an incrusted watch of platinum and enamel at her wrist, "you look—expensive!" That was a substitute for what he intended to say, for her constraint and preoccupation, manifested particularly in her keeping her direct glance away from him, did not seem to grant the ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... Betty to Norma Guerin, who seemed depressed. "She wears three diamond rings and one sapphire and a square-cut emerald. And her wrist-watch is platinum set ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... great. There was no place for the location of such a school like the Knobs of East Tennessee. The hills abounded in metals of all sorts, iron in all its combinations, copper, bismuth, gold and silver in small quantities, platinum he—believed, tin, aluminium; it was covered with forests and strange plants; in the woods were found the coon, the opossum, the fox, the deer and many other animals who roamed in the domain of natural history; coal existed in enormous quantity and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... considered proper on a message-tape. Well, if anybody wondered why, when they played that tape off six months from now in Johannesburg on Terra, they could look in the cargo holds of the ship that had brought it across five hundred light-years of space. Ingots of gold and platinum and gadolinium. Furs and biochemicals and brandy. Perfumes that defied synthetic imitation; hardwoods no plastic could copy. Spices. And the steel coffer full of sunstones. Almost all luxury goods, the only really ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... presently exploited; iron ore, chromium, copper, gold, nickel, platinum and other minerals, and coal and hydrocarbons have been ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... only one English traveller who had a mail jacket made by Wilkinson of Pall Mall, imitating in this point Napoleon III. And (according to the Banker-poet, Rogers) the Duke of Wellington. That of Napoleon is said to have been made of platinum-wire, the work of a Pole who received his money and an order to quit Paris. The late Sir Robert Clifton (they say) tried its value with a Colt after placing it upon one of his coat-models or mannequins. It is easy to make these hauberks arrow-proof or sword-proof, even ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... platinum," she said almost playfully, as she found nerves, muscles, and bones intact after that drop over a precipice into a black chasm. It was like the Marta of the days before she had undertaken to reform all ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... though not without an effect of genial man-to-man frankness. "Well, I guess you and I both know what women's bracelet-watches are." He smiled a superior masculine smile that drew his customer within the informed brotherhood. "Now here, there's a platinum little thing that costs seven hundred and fifty, and this one you like will keep just as good time as that one that costs six hundred more. What could be fairer ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... would lift a locomotive and lower it into the hold of one of his ships with the tiny pincers with which a lapidary picked up a diamond fleck and sealed it in platinum. He contrasted the pneumatic riveter with the tiny hammers of the goldsmith. There seemed to be no less vanity about one than the other. The work of the jeweler would outlast the iron hull. A diamond as large as a ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... were made which paralleled the progress in gas-lighting. Experiments were conducted which bordered closely upon the next epochal event in light-production—the appearance of the gas mantle. One of these was the use of platinum gauze by Kitson. He produced an apparatus similar to the oil-spray lamp, on a small and more delicate scale. The hot blue flame was not very luminous and he attempted to obtain light by heating a mantle of fine platinum gauze. Although these mantles emitted a brilliant ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... forty-two per cent of the area and contain timber in enormous quantities. While a large part of the area is level ground, there is much elevated territory, and the mineral wealth is very important. It includes gold, silver, platinum, iron, copper, coal and salt, all of large occurrence. Of the people, over 1,800,000 are employed in manufacture, and the annual value of the commerce amounts to $1,300,000,000. The length of railway ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... the first imaginary living being, the protobion. To get this protobion the chemists summon a reagent known as a catalyser. The catalyser works its magic on the jelly mass. It sets up a wonderful reaction by its mere presence, without parting with any of its substance. Thus, if a bit of platinum which has this catalytic power is dropped into a vessel containing a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen, the two gases instantly unite and form water. A catalyser introduced in the primordial jelly liberates energy and gives the substance power to break up the various complex unstable compounds ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs |
