Here are some very pretty and easily made experiments in chemistry and as you perform them you can give the explanation I have written about each one which will serve as the patter.

The Mystic Glass of Milk

The Effect

You show a glass of perfectly clean water and blow through

Before Blowing Through Straw

After Blowing Through Straw

Fig. 118. the oracle of amor, or are you in love?

it with a glass tube, clay pipe or a straw when it becomes to all intents, though not to all purposes, milk of the cow variety. See Fig. 118.

The Cause

To perform this chemical trick get 50 grams of good quicklime and powder it in a pint milk bottle. Let it stand for 24 hours and shake it every once in a while. Let it stand another 24 hours and then pour off the clear solution, which is called lime water116 and this is the common name of mystic milk.

116 You can buy it in a drug store already to use.

The Chemical Action

In the first place the lime in the water is calcium hydroxide and when you blow through the lime water the carbon dioxide in your breath acts on the calcium hydroxide and forms a white insoluble powder commonly known as limestone.

Since the calcium carbonate does not dissolve in the water it remains suspended in the solution and this gives it an opalescent hue that doth verily look like the lactic fluid which is white but woe unto the milkman who sells it as such.

For the Fun of the Thing

By pretending you can tell which boys and which girls are in love hand around several glasses of ordinary water and as many of clear lime water. You must see to it, of course, that those whom you want to make believe are in love are given the lime water; then have everybody blow and it is a sure sign that those who change the water into milk are in love.