Chapter 4
Playing With Fire » Melting the Unmeltable

uild a furnace that can liquify just about anything, using only electricity. About a century ago, having no television for entertainment, a famous French chemist named Henri Moissan decided to see what would happen if he stuck two carbon-graphite electrodes into an insulated box and ran a lot of electric current through them.

He figured if he trapped and concentrated the heat produced by the arc he struck, he might be able to do something neat with it. (Yes, scientists get paid for thoughts like these.)