The Chemical History of a Candle by Michael Faraday
page 37 of 119 (31%)
page 37 of 119 (31%)
|
rise in the vessel: it will cover the bottom about two inches. I am now
about to convert the water into steam, for the purpose of shewing to you the different volumes which water occupies in its different states of water and steam. Let us now take the case of water changing into ice: we can effect that by cooling it in a mixture of salt and pounded ice[12]; and I shall do so to shew you the expansion of water into a thing of larger bulk when it is so changed. These bottles [holding one] are made of strong cast iron, very strong and very thick--I suppose they are the third of an inch in thickness; they are very carefully filled with water, so as to exclude all air, and then they are screwed down tight. We shall see that when we freeze the water in these iron vessels, they will not be able to hold the ice, and the expansion within them will break them in pieces as these [pointing to some fragments] are broken, which have been bottles of exactly the same kind. I am about to put these two bottles into that mixture of ice and salt, for the purpose of shewing that when water becomes ice, it changes in volume in this extraordinary way. In the mean time look at the change which has taken place in the water to which we have applied heat--it is losing its fluid state. You may tell this by two or three circumstances. I have covered the mouth of this glass flask, in which water is boiling, with a watch-glass. Do you see what happens? It rattles away like a valve chattering, because the steam rising from the boiling water sends the valve up and down, and forces itself out, and so makes it clatter. You can very easily perceive that the flask is quite full of steam, or else it would not force its way out. You see, also, that the flask contains a substance very much larger than the water, for it fills the whole of the flask over and over again, and there it is blowing away into the air; and yet you cannot observe any great diminution |
|