Micrographia: Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Inquiries ThereuponHooke, Robert
History
Micrographia: Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Inquiries Thereupon
Hooke, Robert
Magnifying glasses -- Early works to 1800; Microscopy -- Early works to 1800; Natural history -- Pre-Linnean works
And the First is an Observation that is very obvious even in these very
drops, to wit, that they are all of them terminated with an unequal or
irregular Surface, especially about the smaller part of the drop, and the
whole length of the stem; as about D, and from thence to A, the whole
Surface, which would have been round if the drop had cool’d leisurely, is,
by being quenched hastily, very irregularly flatted and pitted; which I
suppose proceeds partly from the Waters unequally cooling and pressing the
parts of the drop, and partly from the self-contracting or subsiding
quality of the substance of the Glass: For the vehemency of the heat of the
drop causes such hidden motions and bubbles in the cold Water, that some
parts of the Water bear more forcibly against one part then against
another, and consequently do more suddenly cool those parts to which they
are contiguous.
A Second Argument may be drawn from the Experiment of cutting Glasses with
a hot Iron. For in that Experiment the top of the Iron heats, and thereby
rarifies the parts of the Glass that lie just before the crack, whence each
of those agitated parts indeavouring to expand its self and get elbow-room,
thrusts off all the rest of the contiguous parts, and consequently promotes
the crack that was before begun.
A Third Argument may be drawn from the way of producing a crack in a sound
piece or plate of Glass, which is done two wayes, either First, by suddenly
heating a piece of Glass in one place more then in another. And by this
means _chymists_ usually cut off the necks of Glass-bodies, by two kinds of
Instruments, either by a glowing hot round Iron-Ring, which just
incompasses the place that is to be cut, or else by a _Sulphur’d_ Threed,
which is often wound about the place where the separation is to be made,
and then fired. Or Secondly, A Glass may be cracked by cooling it suddenly
in any place with Water, or the like, after it has been all leisurely and
gradually heated very hot. Both which _Phænomena_ seem manifestly to
proceed from the _expansion_ and contraction of the parts of the Glass,
which is also made more probable by this circumstance which I have
observed, that a piece of common window-glass being heated in the middle
very suddenly with a live Coal or hot Iron, does usually at the first crack
fall into pieces, whereas if the Plate has been gradually heated very hot,
and a drop of cold Water and the like be put on the middle of it, it only
flaws it, but does not break it asunder immediately.
A Fourth Argument may be drawn from this Experiment; Take a Glass-pipe, and
fit into a solid stick of Glass, so as it will but just be moved in it.
Then by degrees heat them whilst they are one within another, and they will
grow stiffer, but when they are again cold, they will be as easie to be
turned as before. This Expansion of Glass is more manifest in this
Experiment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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