Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) by Robert Boyle
page 63 of 285 (22%)
page 63 of 285 (22%)
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following Experiments, where you'l find the Colour of many Corpuscles
brought to cohere by having been Precipitated together, Destroy'd by the Affusion of very peircing and incisive Liquors. The other of the two ways I was speaking of, is, by Dividing the Grosser and more Solid Particles into Minute ones, which will be always Lesser, and for the most part otherwise Shap'd than the Entire Corpuscle so Divided, as it will happen in a piece of Wood reduc'd into Splinters or Chips, or as when a piece of Chrystal heated red Hot and quench'd in Cold water is crack'd into a multitude of little Fragments, which though they fall not asunder, alter the Disposition of the Body of the Chrystal, as to its manner of Reflecting the Light, as we shall have Occasion to shew hereafter. 22. There is a fourth way contrary to the third, whereby a Liquor may change the Colour of another Body, especially of another Fluid, and that is, by procuring the Coalition of several Particles that before lay too Scatter'd and Dispers'd to exhibit the Colour that afterwards appears. Thus sometimes when I have had a Solution of Gold so Dilated, that I doubted whether the Liquor had really Imbib'd any true Gold or no, by pouring in a little _Mercury_, I have been quickly able to satisfie my Self, that the Liquor contain'd Gold, that Mettall after a little while Cloathing the Surface of the _Quick-silver_, with a Thin Film of its own Livery. And chiefly, though not only by this way of bringing the Minute parts of Bodies together in such Numbers as to make them become Notorious to the Eye, many of these Colours seem to be Generated which are produc'd by Precipitations, especially by such as are wont to be made with fair Water, as when Resinous Gumms dissolv'd in Spirit of Wine, are let fall again, if the Spirit be Copiously diluted with that weakning Liquor. And so out of the Rectify'd and Transparent Butter of _Antimony_, by the bare Mixture of fair Water, there will be plentifully Precipitated that Milk-white Substance, which by having its Looser Salts well wash'd off, is turn'd into that Medicine, |
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