Notes of the Day.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXX, Issue 3573, 12 July 1912, Page 4

Notes of the Day.

XEW ZEALAND AND THE OLYM-

PIC GAMES.

The Olympic sports now m progress include the picked athletes of the various nations who will keenly vie with one another for the palm of victory before thousands of spectators, some of them drawn from all quarters of the globe. _ . The big sports carnival lias special interest for New Zealand and Australia, because for the first time an organised effort was made to send a thoroughly representative team of about 40 to take part. The name and inspiration are derived from the ancient games held every fourth yean at Olympia in the Elis of ancient Hellas. Games of some kind had been continuous in Greece from the ninth century 8.C., hut it is from the year 77(5 B.C. that the games are recognised as of national importance, for from that date the Greeks reckoned time by olympiads (i.e., by the period' of four years elapsing between tlie games,). In the warring little world of ancient Greece there was one recurring period of N perfect peace, which nothing was permitted to destroy —-“the truce of God”—during the celebration of the Olympic games, and the benefit to civilisation, has been amply acknowledged by historians. The games went on until finally suppressed by the Roman Emperor Theodosius over 1500 years ago.- In the final decade of last century, however. Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the present president of the International Olympic Committee, conceived the idea of reviving the games in a modern setting, and in 1894 representatives of several nations met in Pans, and agreed to hold the first of the modern .games in Athens in 1596. Th.-se have been held at regular intervals of four years as follow: —1896, Athens; 1900, Paris; 1904, St. Louis (U.S.A.); 1908, LondonThis year’s function at Stockholm—the city of almost perpetual day in June and July, known to tourists as “The White Nights of Sweden” — promises to eclipse the previous games in point of world-wide interest, and the 4000 competitors from over 40 cations represent the cream of atliieletes. In New Zealand and Australia interest centres in the doings of tl e most completely-organised team tire lias yet gone forth to uphold our colonies in international competition. Previous efforts in the same direction have been haphazard, and, although on this occasion the little hand of Australasian jis trifling in numbers compared with some of the older nations, there is believed to be sufficient calibre and gift to make up for the lack of numbers. With about 40 competitors New Zealand and Australia wall contest the following events: Rowing and sculling, swimming .athletics, and Marathon running, rifle shooting, cycling, tennis, and wrestling.

DID THE TITANIC SINK TO THE

BOTTOM

Numerous inquiries have reached us in which it is asked: “Did the Titanic sink to the bottom ~_of the ocean, or was she held suspended at a depth of a few hundred feet ?’’ There is (says the “Scientific American,” in dealing with similar questions) only one reply: The Titanic is at the bottom. Such questions are based uuon the erroneous supposition that the density of the water at the bottom of the sea is far greater than at the surface. Density is here confused with pressure. The pressure increased enormously as we descend, amounting to considerably over 60001 b per square foot at a depth of 100 ft. Divers sometimes work at depths of as much as 150 ft, where the pressure is half again as much, 9863. 1 51 b, to he exact. When provided with special armoured diving suits, divers have operated at "considerably greater depths; but- nothing approaching tne depth at which the Titanic now lies. This depth is given at 2000 fathoms, which is considerably over two miles, and the pressure amounts to threequarters of a million pounds per square foot. It is only natural to suppose that under such pressure tne density of the water would he increased; hut laboratory experiments have shown that it is almost impossible to compress water. Indeed, for a long time it was thought that water was absolutely incompressible; but by the use of more sensitive measuring instruments it lias been found that ar a, depth of a mile the density of sea water is only a three-hundredth pan greater than at the surface. However. for all practical purposes we may consider that a given volume of water is not materially reducible ill dimensions by pressure. With this clearly in mind, it is very evident that an object that would not float at.any intermediate point, hut must surely sink to the bottom; for it could not displaced greater weight .of water at the bottom than at the top, even though the water in the first case was under much higher pressure. As a matter of fact, any air-filled chambers or compressible matter in the vessel would be crushed in by the enormous pressure of the water, so that the displacement of the wreck would he growing less as it went down, and it would be falling through the water at a corresponding

acceleration. We must also remember that even iron is more compras«il>!e than water, and consequently a solid block «f this material would actually weigh more at the bottom of the sea than at the top-