Conversations on Chemistry Part 18

The water below, therefore, no longer sustains the pressure of the atmosphere, and will consequently boil at a much lower temperature.

Thus, you see, though it had lost many degrees of heat, it began boiling again the instant the vacuum was formed above it. The boiling has now ceased, the temperature of the water being still farther reduced; if it had been ether, instead of water, it would have continued boiling much longer, for ether boils, under the usual atmospheric pressure, at a temperature as low as 100 degrees; and in a vacuum it boils at almost any temperature; but water being a more dense fluid, requires a more considerable quant.i.ty of caloric to make it evaporate quickly, even when the pressure of the atmosphere is removed.

EMILY.

What proportion of vapour can the atmosphere contain in a state of solution?

MRS. B.

I do not know whether it has been exactly ascertained by experiment; but at any rate this proportion must vary, both according to the temperature and the weight of the atmosphere; for the lower the temperature, and the greater the pressure, the smaller must be the proportion of vapour that the atmosphere can contain.

To conclude the subject of free caloric, I should mention _Ignition_, by which is meant that emission of light which is produced in bodies at a very high temperature, and which is the effect of acc.u.mulated caloric.

EMILY.

You mean, I suppose, that light which is produced by a burning body?

MRS. B.

No: ignition is quite independent of combustion. Clay, chalk, and indeed all incombustible substances, may be made red hot. When a body burns, the light emitted is the effect of a chemical change which takes place, whilst ignition is the effect of caloric alone, and no other change than that of temperature is produced in the ignited body.

All solid bodies, and most liquids, are susceptible of ignition, or, in other words, of being heated so as to become luminous; and it is remarkable that this takes place pretty nearly at the same temperature in all bodies, that is, at about 800 degrees of Fahrenheit's scale.

EMILY.

But how can liquids attain so high a temperature, without being converted into vapour?

MRS. B.

By means of confinement and pressure. Water confined in a strong iron vessel (called Papin's digester) can have its temperature raised to upwards of 400 degrees. Sir James Hall has made some very curious experiments on the effects of heat a.s.sisted by pressure; by means of strong gun-barrels, he succeeded in melting a variety of substances which were considered as infusible: and it is not unlikely that, by similar methods, water itself might be heated to redness.

EMILY.

I am surprised at that: for I thought that the force of steam was such as to destroy almost all mechanical resistance.

MRS. B.

The expansive force of steam is prodigious; but in order to subject water to such high temperatures, it is prevented by confinement from being converted into steam, and the expansion of heated water is comparatively trifling. --But we have dwelt so long on the subject of free caloric, that we must reserve the other modifications of that agent to our next meeting, when we shall endeavour to proceed more rapidly.

CONVERSATION IV.

ON COMBINED CALORIC, COMPREHENDING SPECIFIC AND LATENT HEAT.

MRS. B.

We are now to examine the other modifications of caloric.

CAROLINE.

I am very curious to know of what nature they can be; for I have no notion of any kind of heat that is not perceptible to the senses.

MRS. B.

In order to enable you to understand them, it will be necessary to enter into some previous explanations.

It has been discovered by modern chemists, that bodies of a different nature, heated to the same temperature, do not contain the same quant.i.ty of caloric.

CAROLINE.

How could that be ascertained? Have you not told us that it is impossible to discover the absolute quant.i.ty of caloric which bodies contain?

MRS. B.

True; but at the same time I said that we were enabled to form a judgment of the proportions which bodies bore to each other in this respect. Thus it is found that, in order to raise the temperature of different bodies the same number of degrees, different quant.i.ties of caloric are required for each of them. If, for instance, you place a pound of lead, a pound of chalk, and a pound of milk, in a hot oven, they will be gradually heated to the temperature of the oven; but the lead will attain it first, the chalk next, and the milk last.

CAROLINE.

That is a natural consequence of their different bulks; the lead being the smallest body, will be heated soonest, and the milk, which is the largest, will require the longest time.

MRS. B.

That explanation will not do, for if the lead be the least in bulk, it offers also the least surface to the caloric, the quant.i.ty of heat therefore which can enter into it in the same s.p.a.ce of time is proportionally smaller.

EMILY.

Why, then, do not the three bodies attain the temperature of the oven at the same time?

MRS. B.

It is supposed to be on account of the different capacity of these bodies for caloric.

CAROLINE.

What do you mean by the capacity of a body for caloric?

MRS. B.

I mean a certain disposition of bodies to require more or less caloric for raising their temperature to any degree of heat. Perhaps the fact may be thus explained:

Let us put as many marbles into this gla.s.s as it will contain, and pour some sand over them--observe how the sand penetrates and lodges between them. We shall now fill another gla.s.s with pebbles of various forms--you see that they arrange themselves in a more compact manner than the marbles, which, being globular, can touch each other by a single point only. The pebbles, therefore, will not admit so much sand between them; and consequently one of these gla.s.ses will necessarily contain more sand than the other, though both of them be equally full.

CAROLINE.

This I understand perfectly. The marbles and the pebbles represent two bodies of different kinds, and the sand the caloric contained in them; it appears very plain, from this comparison, that one body may admit of more caloric between its particles than another.