Admit One / mental gymnasium
(like sit-ups for your brain)

A great little read provided to us by Ira Remsen.

While reading a text book of chemistry, I came upon
the statement, “nitric acid acts upon copper.” I was
getting tired of reading such absurd stuff and I
determined to see what this meant. Copper was more
or less familiar to me, for copper cents were then in
use. I had seen a bottle marked “nitric acid” on a table
in the doctor’s office where I was then ‘doing time’!
I did not know its peculiarities, but I was getting on
and likely to learn. The spirit of adventure was upon
me. Having nitric acid and copper, I had only to learn
what the words “act upon” meant. Then the statement
“nitric acid acts upon copper”, would be something
more than mere words. All was still. In the interest of
knowledge I was even willing to sacrifice one of the
few copper cents then in my hand. I put one of them
on the table; opened the bottle marked “nitric acid”;
poured some of the liquid on the copper; and prepared
to make an observation. But what was this wonderful
thing which I beheld? The cent was already changed,
and it was no small change either. A greenish blue
liquid foamed and fumed over the cent and over the
table. The air in the neighborhood of the performance
became colored dark red. A great cloud arose: This
was disagreeable and suffocating — how should I stop
this? I tried to get rid of the objectionable mess by
picking it up and throwing it out the window, which I
had meanwhile opened. I learned another fact — nitric
acid not only acts upon copper but it acts upon fingers.
The pain led to another unpremeditated experiment. I
drew my fingers across my trousers and another fact
was discovered. Nitric acid acts upon trousers. Taking
everything into consideration, that was the most
impressive experiment, and, relatively, probably the
most costly experiment I have ever performed. I tell of it
even now with interest. It was a revelation to me. It
resulted in a desire on my part to learn more about that
remarkable kind of action. Plainly the only way to learn
about it was to see its results, to experiment, to work in
a laboratory.

via wikipedia

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