A Class-book of Chemistry

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D. Appleton & Company, 1874 - 462 pages
 

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Page 171 - It is hardly necessary to add that anything which any insulated body, or system of bodies, can continue to furnish without limitation, cannot possibly be a material substance; and it appears to me to be extremely difficult, if not quite impossible, to form any distinct idea of anything capable of being excited and communicated in the manner the Heat was excited and communicated in these experiments, except it be MOTION.
Page 171 - By meditating on the results of all these experiments, we are naturally brought to that great question which has so often been the subject of speculation among philosophers, namely, what is heat? Is there any such thing as an igneous fluid? Is there anything that can with propriety be called caloric?
Page 118 - I have seen the wild stone avalanches of the Alps, which smoke and thunder down the declivities with a vehemence almost sufficient to stun the observer; I have also seen snow-flakes descending so softly as not to hurt the fragile spangles of which they were composed ; yet to produce from aqueous vapor a quantity of that tender material which a child could carry, demands an exertion of energy competent to gather up the shattered blocks of the largest stone avalanche I have ever seen, and pitch them...
Page 17 - The sorting of a multitude of things into parcels, for the sake of knowing them better, and remembering them more easily, is classification. When we attempt to classify a multitude of things, we first observe some respects in which they differ from each other ; for we could not classify things that are entirely alike ; as, for instance, a bushel of peas ; we then separate things that are not alike, and bring together things...

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