Papers on Radiation, Chemistry: 1901-1912

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Page 215 - On partially liquefying carbonic acid by pressure alone, and gradually raising at the same time the temperature to 88° Fahr., the surface of demarcation between the liquid and gas became fainter, lost its curvature, and at last disappeared. The space was then occupied by a homogeneous fluid, which exhibited, when the pressure was suddenly diminished or the temperature slightly lowered, a peculiar appearance of moving or flickering striae throughout its entire mass.
Page 238 - ... that the smallest particles of matter may cohere by the strongest attractions, and compose bigger particles of weaker virtue ; and many of these may cohere and compose bigger particles whose virtue is still weaker ; and so on for divers successions, until the progression end in the biggest particles, on which the operations in chemistry, and the colours of natural bodies, depend, and which, by adhering, compose bodies of a sensible magnitude.
Page 208 - New experiments and observations touching cold, or, An experimental history of cold, begun.
Page 200 - Accurate and minute measurement seems to the non-scientific imagination a less lofty and dignified work than looking for something new. But nearly all the grandest discoveries of science have been but the rewards of accurate measurement and patient long-continued labour in the minute sifting of numerical results.
Page 215 - Andrews called the critical temperature. He showed that this temperature is constant, and differs with each substance, and that it is always associated with a definite pressure peculiar to each body. Thus the two constants, critical temperature and pressure, which have been of the greatest importance in subsequent investigations, came to be defined, and a complete experimental proof was given that ' the gaseous and liquid states are only distinct stages of the same condition of matter and are capable...
Page 235 - ... interplanetary space, becoming, as Wilson has shown, nuclei of aggregation of condensable vapours and cosmic dust. The liquid and solid particles thus formed will be of various sizes ; the larger will gravitate back to the sun, while those with diameters less than one and a half thousandths of a millimetre, but nevertheless greater than a wavelength of light, will, in accordance with Clerk-Maxwell's electromagnetic theory, be driven away from the sun by the incidence of the solar rays upon them,...
Page 201 - Every substance must be assumed to be impure, every reaction must be assumed to be incomplete, every measurement must be assumed to contain error, until proof to the contrary can be obtained. Only by means of the utmost care, applied with ever-watchful judgment, may the unexpected snares which always lurk in complicated processes be detected and rendered powerless for evil.
Page 148 - This disclosure was made in a letter to Sir Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society of London, dated March 20, 1800. Before this letter was published in the Philosophical Transactions its contents had become known to London physicists, and Nicholson and Carlisle had decomposed water by means of Volta "s pile.
Page 232 - ... way in which we stimulate them appear to be equally brilliant, and for the absence, with one doubtful exception, of all the rays of nitrogen. If we cannot give the reason of this, it is because we do not know the mechanism of luminescence — nor even whether the particles which carry the electricity are themselves luminous, or whether they only produce stresses causing other particles which encounter them to vibrate — yet we are certain that an electric discharge in a highly rarefied mixture...
Page 200 - I mean to say, that if arithmetic, mensuration, and weighing be taken away from any art, that which remains will not be much.

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