"Let that ice water at thirty-two degrees of temperature receive one
hundred and eighty degrees of heat, and the water rises to two hundred and
twelve degrees, the temperature of boiling. But whatever additional heat
is absorbed brings no increase of temperature, but transforms the water
into steam. It is employed in overcoming the cohesive attraction of the
molecules of water and changing the liquid to a gas. About one thousand
degrees of heat is thus expended, but the steam which is produced has
only the temperature of two hundred and twelve degrees. If the process be
reversed, the steam gives up, as it is said, the one thousand degrees of
heat in returning to the condition of water and the one hundred and forty
degrees in resuming the crystalline structure of ice. The heat which was
employed as force in overcoming the atomic and molecular attractions is
transmuted again to heat, and shows itself in raising the temperature. And
that which is true of water is true of any other substance in changing its
form from a solid to a liquid or from a liquid to a gas, or the opposite.
In an amount different for each kind of matter, in all these changes of
condition, heat is transmuted to force or force to heat.
"These transmutations are going on ceaselessly in the operations of
Nature, and without understanding them we cannot appreciate the wonderful
operations of heat in the world. The heat of the sun beams upon the ocean;
the greater part of that heat is expended as force in overcoming the
molecular attraction of water, thus converting it to vapor, and in raising
that vapor to the higher regions of the atmosphere. This heat-force, or,
as we might call it, 'sunpower,' expended upon the earth, amounts to
thousands of millions of horse-power daily.
[Illustration: TRANSMUTATION of HEAT.
Page 113.]
"Examples of the transmutation of force into heat abound everywhere. A boy
strikes his heel upon the stone pavement; from the point of contact
between the stone and the steel points in his boot heel sparks of fire fly
out. Force is changed to heat so intense that particles of steel are set
on fire. Savages who have no better methods of kindling fire rub dry wood
together till the sticks ignite. The force expended in overcoming the
friction is changed to heat. In the combustion of coal beneath the steam
boiler we see both processes going on. The atoms of carbon dash against
the atoms of oxygen, and the force of the collision generates the heat of
the combustion. This heat, born thus of force, is again transmuted to
force, and drives the engine and the machinery attached. In our study of
God's management of heat we shall constantly meet with these changes. You
will need, therefore, to study carefully this subject of latent heat.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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