The discovery of Joule's equivalent established a relationship between motion or mechanical work performed and the amount of heat generated when work is completely expanded in friction. The same relationships continue good when the work is transformed by indirect means as by generating electric currents or expanding gases. The multitude of elegant experiments used to confirm the truth of Joule's law showed that heat is not a substance, or calorie, but a purely mechanical effect. This great discovery of the relation of friction and heat lies at the basis of electricity, molecular physics, and chemistry, and is the source of the formulæ used by engineers in designing power machinery. The internal combustion engine is largely a result of the discovery of Joule's equivalent and the physical theories derived from it. This great discovery caused a new theory of matter to be developed. Dalton had suggested, when applying the atomic theory to chemistry, that when two elements combine to form a third substance, it is probable that one atom of one element joins itself to one atom of the other, unless some exceptional condition exists. When water is formed by bringing oxygen and hydrogen together, he supposed that one atom of oxygen combined with one atom of hydrogen. Gay-Lussac subsequently proved that not only does one volume of oxygen combine with two volumes of hydrogen (not one as Dalton believed) in the production of water, but that nitric and carbonic acid gases combine with ammonia gas in the ratio of 1:1 or 1:2. He also demonstrated that one volume of nitrogen united with three of hydrogen form ammonia, and that carbonic oxide burning in a mass of oxygen consumes half its volume of oxygen. He concluded from these and other facts that gases always combine together in simple proportions by volume and that the apparent contraction of volume they show on combining bears a similar simple relationship to the volume of one or more of the gases. Avogadro, working on Gay-Lussac's experimental data, suggested that the number of integral molecules in any gas is always the same for equal volumes, or is always proportional to the volumes. He also suggested that equal volumes of different gases at the same pressure and temperature contain the same number of molecules. Experiments on alcohol made by Williamson raised doubts as to the validity of Avogadro's hypotheses when applied to chemical combinations. These doubts were cleared in 1860, when the new chemical atomic weights and formulæ were introduced into English textbooks. The molecular theory of matter derived from these experiments supposes that all visible forms of matter are aggregations of simpler and smaller chemical elements. Mendeléeff and Newlands showed that the physical and chemical properties of the elements are functions of their atomic weights.