On the various forces of nature and their relations to each otherFaraday, Michael
Science
On the various forces of nature and their relations to each other
Faraday, Michael
Physics
Whenever oxygen and hydrogen unite together they produce water; and you
have seen the extraordinary difference between the bulk and appearance
of the water so produced, and the particles of which it consists
chemically. Now, we have never yet been able to reduce either oxygen
or hydrogen to the liquid state; and yet their first impulse, when
chemically combined, is to take up first this liquid condition, and
then the solid condition. We never combine these different particles
together without producing water; and it is curious to think how often
you must have made the experiment of combining oxygen and hydrogen to
form water without knowing it. Take a candle, for instance, and a clean
silver spoon (or a piece of clean tin will do), and if you hold it
over the flame, you immediately cover it with dew--not a smoke--which
presently evaporates. This perhaps will serve to shew it better. Mr.
Anderson will put a candle under that jar, and you will see how soon
the water is produced (fig. 30). Look at that dimness on the sides of
the glass, which will soon produce drops, and trickle down into the
plate. Well, that dimness and these drops are _water_, formed by the
union of the oxygen of the air with the hydrogen existing in the wax of
which that candle is formed.
[Illustration: Fig. 30.]
And now, having brought you in the first place to the consideration
of chemical attraction, I must enlarge your ideas so as to include
all substances which have this attraction for each other--for it
changes the character of bodies, and alters them in this way and that
way in the most extraordinary manner, and produces other phenomena
wonderful to think about. Here is some chlorate of potash, and there
some sulphuret of antimony.[17] We will mix these two different sets
of particles together; and I want to shew you in a general sort of way
some of the phenomena which take place when we make different particles
act together. Now, I can make these bodies act upon each other in
several ways. In this case I am going to apply heat to the mixture; but
if I were to give a blow with a hammer, the same result would follow.
[A lighted match was brought to the mixture, which immediately exploded
with a sudden flash, evolving a dense white smoke.] There you see the
result of the action of chemical affinity overcoming the attraction of
cohesion of the particles. Again, here is a little sugar[18], quite a
different substance from the black sulphuret of antimony, and you shall
see what takes place when we put the two together. [The mixture was
touched with sulphuric acid, when it took fire and burnt gradually,
and with a brighter flame than in the former instance.] Observe this
chemical affinity travelling about the mass, and setting it on fire,
and throwing it into such wonderful agitation!
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