Klarinet Archive - Posting 000848.txt from 2001/01

From: Bilwright@-----.net (William Wright)
Subj: [kl] Life's little mysteries.....
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 21:29:23 -0500

I use 'pure' (pharmaceutical grade) lanolin as my cork grease. It
comes in a large tub, and I have saved a few empty lip balm dispensers
such as cork grease normally comes in. I pack these dispensers with
the lanolin and do my best to remove the air bubbles.

Now here's the mystery:

Even though the dispenser stays at a constant temperature (as
constant as my household thermostat can maintain and therefore there
presumably is no shrinkage or expansion), and even though the dispenser
lies horizontal on my desk (and thereby eliminates any vertical movement
due to gravity) --- each time that I remove the lid from the dispenser,
the lanolin has sunk down into the dispenser by about 1/8", such that I
must twist the dispenser a quarter-turn in order to push the lanolin
back up to the top where it was when I capped it the previous day.
It doesn't matter whether the dispenser was recently packed full
and therefore the little piston is at the bottom of the tube, or is
mostly empty and therefore the little piston is near the top of the
tube.
So far as I know, lanolin does not evaporate or sublimate, and
pharmaceutical grade does not contain any solvents that can evaporate
(at a constant rate of 1/8" per 24 hours regardless of the volume in the
dispenser).

So where does that 1/8" of lanolin go each day? I don't believe
in elves or poltergeists.

Cheers,
Bill

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