With the hope of contributing materially to our knowledge regarding the
indirect determination of oxygen, the special form of balance shown in
fig. 9 was installed above the chair calorimeter. This balance is
extremely sensitive. With a dead load of 100 kilograms in each pan it
has shown a sensitiveness of 0.1 gram, but in order to have the
apparatus absolutely air-tight for the oxygen and carbon-dioxide
determination, the rod on which the weighing-chair is suspended must
pass through an air-tight closure. For this closure we have used a thin
rubber membrane, weighing about 1.34 grams, one end of which is tied to
a hard-rubber tube ascending from the chair to the top of the
calorimeter, the other end being tied to the suspension rod. In playing
up and down this rod takes up a varying weight of the rubber diaphragm,
depending upon the position which it assumes, and therefore the
sensitiveness noted by the balance with a dead load and swinging freely
is greater than that under conditions of actual use. Preliminary tests
with the balance lead us to believe that with a slight improvement in
the technique a man can be weighed to within 0.3 gram by means of this
balance. A series of check-experiments to test the indirect with the
direct determination of oxygen are in progress at the moment of writing,
and it is hoped that this problem can be satisfactorily solved ere long.
During the process of weighing, the ventilating air-current is stopped
so as to prevent any slight tension on the rubber diaphragm and furnish
the best conditions for sensitive equilibrium. After the weighing has
been made and the time exactly recorded, the load is thrown off the
knife-edges of the balance, and then provision has been made to raise
the rod supporting the chair and simultaneously force a rubber stopper
tightly into the hard rubber tube at the top of the calorimeter, thus
making the closure absolutely tight. It is somewhat hazardous to rely
during the entire period of an experiment upon the thin rubber membrane
for the closure when the blower is moving the air-current.
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