 Introduction to How to do chemical tricks containing over 100 highly amusing and instructive tricks with chemicals. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Kyle van de Glast. How to do chemical tricks containing over 100 highly amusing and instructive tricks with chemicals by A.T. Anderson. Narrators note. This book has illustrations in its printed form and references several drawings throughout. If desired, these could be found on the catalogue page, but are not included here. Introduction How to do chemical tricks From the remotest ages, chemistry has exercised the strongest fascination on the minds of the curious, nor is it a matter of surprise that boys should feel themselves drawn strongly by its mystery and seeming magic. This attraction is undoubtedly caused by what the ancients called the elements, earth, air, fire, and water. There is something so weird about the manifestation of air and fire that it is not difficult to understand how the alchemists believe them to be forces able to be used at the bidding of spirits who might be conjured up by incantations and spells. Now it is known that these uncanny beings existed only in the imagination of the forerunners of modern chemists. But what boy can look on the brilliantly colored fires of a 4th of July display, for the burnished gold of the setting sun, for the fantastic pictures in the glowing coals in a grate, and not feel that there is still something of magic and mystery in fire still? What the boy feels the scientists cannot explain. Nobody knows actually what fire is. All that can be said is that fire is produced by certain substances such as coals, wood, or paper that give out heat while passing from one state to another. Now the word element was and is used to mean that simplest form of matter, which with other simplest forms goes to make up the whole world of everything in it. The earth, animals, plants, the sea, the atmosphere are all made up of one or more of some 70 substances called elements. Hence it is clear that the earth, air, and water are not, as the ancients thought, elements at all. As will be seen in this little book, both air and water consist of mixtures of elements. In chemistry such mixtures are called compounds. This word occurs again and again, so its explanations should be remembered. One great fact must be remembered, which is at the very root of chemistry. Nothing is really lost, however much its form may be changed, or however many changes it may pass through. For instance it may seem that when a block of wood be burned that a very large amount of it is lost. If however the ashes, the smoke, and the carbon that is burned by the air. Sample complete. Ready to continue?