Introductory Note
Michael Faraday was the son of a blacksmith, and was born at Newington Butts, near
London, September 22, 1791. He began life as an errand boy to a bookbinder and stationer,
to whom he was later bound apprentice. After eight years in this business, he was engaged
by Sir Humphry Davy as his laboratory assistant at the Royal Institution, and in 1813-15
he traveled extensively on the Continent with his master, and saw some of the most famous
scientists of Europe. Shortly after his return to the Royal Institution, he began to make
contributions of his own to science, his first paper appearing in 1816. He became director
of the laboratory in 1825, and professor of chemistry in 1833; rising rapidly, through the
number and importance of his discoveries, to a most distinguished position. But he was
working at too great pressure, and in 1841 his health gave way, so that for some three
years he could not work at all. He recovered, however, and made some of his most important
discoveries after this interruption; and was offered, but declined, the presidency of both
the Royal Society and the Royal Institution. He died August 25, 1867.
It was characteristic of Faraday's devotion to the enlargement of the bounds of
human knowledge that on his discovery of magneto-electricity he abandoned the commercial
work by which he had added to his small salary, in order to reserve all his energies for
research. This financial loss was in part made up later by a pension of 300 pounds a year
from the British Government.
Faraday's parents were members of the obscure religious denomination of the
Sandemanians, and Faraday himself, shortly after his marriage, at the age of thirty,
joined the same sect, to which he adhered till his death. Religion and science he kept
strictly apart, believing that the data of science were of an entirely different nature
from the direct communications between God and the soul on which his religious faith was
based.
The discoveries made by Faraday were so numerous, and often demand so detailed a
knowledge of chemistry and physics before they can be understood, that it is impossible to
attempt to describe or even enumerate them here. Among the most important are the
discovery of magneto-electric induction, of the law of electro-chemical decomposition, of
the magnetization of light, and of diamagnetism. Round each of these are grouped numbers
of derivative but still highly important additions to scientific knowledge, and together
they form so vast an achievement as to lead his successor, Tyndall, to say, "Taking
him for all and all, I think it will be conceded that Michael Faraday was the greatest
experimental philosopher the world has ever seen; and I will add the opinion, that the
progress of future research will tend, not to dim or to diminish, but to enhance and
glorify the labours of this mighty investigator."
In spite of the highly technical nature of his work in research, Faraday was
remarkably gifted as an expounder of science to popular audiences; and his lectures at the
Royal Institution, especially those to younger audiences, were justly famous. The
following example is a classic in the department of clear and fascinating scientific
exposition.
Lecture I: The Force Of Gravitation
Delivered Before A Juvenile Auditory At The Royal Institution Of Great Britain
During The Christmas Holidays Of 1859-60
It grieves me much to think that I may have been a cause of disturbance to your
Christmas arrangements,1 for nothing is more satisfactory to my mind than to
perform what I undertake; but such things are not always left to our own power, and we
must submit to circumstances as they are appointed. I will to-day do my best, and will ask
you to bear with me if I am unable to give more than a few words; and, as a substitute, I
will endeavor to make the illustrations of the sense I try to express as full as possible;
and if we find by the end of this lecture that we may be justified in continuing them,
thinking that next week our power shall be greater, why then, with submission to you, we
will take such course as you may think fit, either to go on or discontinue them; and
although I now feel much weakened by the pressure of the illness (a mere cold) upon me,
both in facility of expression and clearness of thought, I shall here claim, as I always
have done on these occasions, the right of addressing myself to the younger members of the
audience; and for this purpose, therefore, unfitted as it may seem for an elderly, infirm
man to do so, I will return to second childhood, and become as it were, young again among
the young.
[Footnote 1: The opening lecture was twice postponed on account of Dr. Faraday's
illness.]
Let us now consider, for a little while, how wonderfully we stand upon this world. Here
it is we are born, bred, and live, and yet we view these things with an almost entire
absence of wonder to ourselves respecting the way in which all this happens. So small,
indeed, is our wonder, that we are never taken by surprise; and I do think that, to a
young person of ten, fifteen, or twenty years of age, perhaps the first sight of a
cataract or a mountain would occasion him more surprise than he had ever felt concerning
the means of his own existence; how he came here; how he lives; by what means he stands
upright; and through what means he moves about from place to place. Hence, we come into
this world, we live, and depart from it, without our thoughts being called specifically to
consider how all this takes place; and were it not for the exertions of some few inquiring
minds, who have looked into these things, and ascertained the very beautiful laws and
conditions by which we do live and stand upon the earth, we should hardly be aware that
there was any thing wonderful in it. These inquiries, which have occupied philosophers
from the earliest days, when they first began to find out the laws by which we grow, and
exist, and enjoy ourselves, up to the present time, have shown us that all this was
effected in consequence of the existence of certain forces, or abilities to do things, or
powers, that are so common that nothing can be more so; for nothing is commoner than the
wonderful powers by which we are enabled to stand upright: they are essential to our
existence every moment.
It is my purpose to-day to make you acquainted with some of these powers: not the vital
ones, but some of the more elementary, and what we call physical powers; and, in the
outset, what can I do to bring to your minds a notion of neither more nor less than that
which I mean by the word power or force? Suppose I take this sheet of paper, and place it
upright on one edge, resting against a support before me (as the roughest possible
illustration of something to be disturbed), and suppose I then pull this piece of string
which is attached to it. I pull the paper over. I have therefore brought into use a power
of doing so - the power of my hand carried on through this string in a way which is very
remarkable when we come to analyze it; and it is by means of these powers conjointly (for
there are several powers here employed) that I pull the paper over. Again, if I give it a
push upon the other side, I bring into play a power, but a very different exertion of
power from the former; or, if I take now this bit of shell-lac [a stick of shell-lac about
12 inches long and 1 1-2 in diameter], and rub it with flannel, and hold it an inch or so
in front of the upper part of this upright sheet, the paper is immediately moved towards
the shell-lac, and by now drawing the latter away, the paper falls over without having
been touched by any thing. You see, in the first illustration I produced an effect than
which nothing could be commoner; I pull it over now, not by means of that string or the
pull of my hand, but by some action in this shell-lac. The shell-lac, therefore, has a
power wherewith it acts upon the sheet of paper; and, as an illustration of the exercise
of another kind of power, I might use gunpowder with which to throw it over.
Now I want you to endeavor to comprehend that when I am speaking of a power or force, I
am speaking of that which I used just now to pull over this piece of paper. I will not
embarrass you at present with the name of that power, but it is clear there was a
something in the shell-lac which acted by attraction, and pulled the paper over; this,
then, is one of those things which we call power, or force; and you will now be able to
recognize it as such in whatever form I show it to you. We are not to suppose that there
are so very many different powers; on the contrary, it is wonderful to think how few are
the powers by which all the phenomena of nature are governed. There is an illustration of
another kind of power in that lamp; there is a power of heat - a power of doing something,
but not the same power as that which pulled the paper over; and so, by degrees, we find
that there are certain other powers (not many) in the various bodies around us; and thus,
beginning with the simplest experiments of pushing and pulling, I shall gradually proceed
to distinguish these powers one from the other, and compare the way in which they combine
together. This world upon which we stand (and we have not much need to travel out of the
world for illustrations of our subject; but the mind of man is not confined like the
matter of his body, and thus he may and does travel outward, for wherever his sight can
pierce, there his observations can penetrate) is pretty nearly a round globe, having its
surface disposed in a manner of which this terrestrial globe by my side is a rough model;
so much is land and so much is water; and by looking at it here we see in a sort of map or
picture how the world is formed upon its surface. Then, when we come to examine farther, I
refer you to this sectional diagram of the geological strata of the earth, in which there
is a more elaborate view of what is beneath the surface of our globe. And, when we come to
dig into or examine it (as man does for his own instruction and advantage, in a variety of
ways), we see that it is made up of different kinds of matter, subject to a very few
powers; and all disposed in this strange and wonderful way, which gives to man a history -
and such a history - as to what there is in those veins, in those rocks, the ores, the
water-springs, the atmosphere around, and all varieties of material substances, held
together by means of forces in one great mass, 8,000 miles in diameter, that the mind is
overwhelmed in contemplation of the wonderful history related by these strata (some of
which are fine and thin like sheets of paper), all formed in succession by the forces of
which I have spoken.
I now shall try to help your attention to what I may say by directing, to - day, our
thoughts to one kind of power. You see what I mean by the term matter - any of these
things that I can lay hold of with the hand, or in a bag (for I may take hold of the air
by inclosing it in a bag) - they are all portions of matter with which we have to deal at
present, generally or particularly, as I may require to illustrate my subject. Here is the
sort of matter which we call water - it is there ice [pointing to a block of ice upon the
table], there water - [pointing to the water boiling in a flask] - here vapor - you see it
issuing out from the top [of the flask]. Do not suppose that that ice and that water are
two entirely different things, or that the steam rising in bubbles and ascending in vapor
there is absolutely different from the fluid water: it may be different in some
particulars, having reference to the amounts of power which it contains; but it is the
same, nevertheless, as the great ocean of water around our globe, and I employ it here for
the sake of illustration, because if we look into it we shall find that it supplies us
with examples of all the powers to which I shall have to refer. For instance, here is
water - it is heavy; but let us examine it with regard to the amount of its heaviness or
its gravity. I have before me a little glass vessel and scales [nearly equipoised scales,
one of which contained a half-pint glass vessel], and the glass vessel is at present the
lighter of the two; but if I now take some water and pour it in, you see that that side of
the scales immediately goes down; that shows you (using common language, which I will not
suppose for the present you have hitherto applied very strictly) that it is heavy, and if
I put this additional weight into the opposite scale, I should not wonder if this vessel
would hold water enough to weigh it down. [The lecturer poured more water into the jar,
which again went down.] Why do I hold the bottle above the vessel to pour the water into
it? You will say, because experience has taught me that it is necessary. I do it for a
better reason because it is a law of nature that the water should fall toward the earth,
and therefore the very means which I use to cause the water to enter the vessel are those
which will carry the whole body of water down. That power is what we call gravity, and you
see there [pointing to the scales] a good deal of water gravitating toward the earth. Now
here [exhibiting a small piece of platinum2] is another thing which gravitates
toward the earth as much as the whole of that water. See what a little there is of it;
that little thing is heavier than so much water [placing the metal in opposite scales to
the water]. What a wonderful thing it is to see that it requires so much water as that [a
half-pint vessel full] to fall toward the earth, compared with the little mass of
substance I have here! And again, if I take this metal [a bar of aluminium3 about eight times the bulk of the platinum], we find the water will balance that as well
as it did the platinum; so that we get, even in the very outset, an example of what we
want to understand by the words forces or powers.
[Footnote 2: Platinum, with one exception the heaviest body known, is 21 1/2 times
heavier than water.]
[Footnote 3: Aluminium is 2 1/2 times heavier than water.]
I have spoken of water, and first of all of its property of falling downward: you know
very well how the oceans surround the globe - how they fall round the surface, giving
roundness to it, clothing it like a garment; but, besides that, there are other properties
of water. Here, for instance, is some quicklime, and if I add some water to it, you will
find another power and property in the water.4 It is now very hot; it is
steaming up; and I could perhaps light phosphorus or a lucifer-match with it. Now that
could not happen without a force in the water to produce the result; but that force is
entirely distinct from its power of falling to the earth. Again, here is another substance
[some anhydrous sulphate of copper5] which will illustrate another kind of
power. [The lecturer here poured some water over the white sulphate of copper, which
immediately became blue, evolving considerable heat at the same time.] Here is the same
water with a substance which heats nearly as much as the lime does, but see how
differently. So great indeed is this heat in the case of lime, that it is sufficient
sometimes (as you see here) to set wood on fire; and this explains what we have sometimes
heard, of barges laden with quicklime taking fire in the middle of the river, in
consequence of this power of heat brought into play by a leakage of the water into the
barge. You see how strangely different subjects for our consideration arise when we come
to think over these various matters - the power of heat evolved by acting upon lime with
water, and the power which water has of turning this salt of copper from white to blue.
[Footnote 4: Power or property in water. This power - the heat by which the water is
kept in a fluid state - is said, under ordinary circumstances, to be latent or insensible.
When, however, the water changes its form, and, by uniting with the lime or sulphate of
copper, becomes solid, the heat which retained it in a liquid state is evolved.]
[Footnote 5: Anhydrous sulphate of copper: sulphate of copper deprived of its water of
crystallization. To obtain it the blue sulphate is calcined in an earthen crucible.]
I want you now to understand the nature of the most simple exertion of this power of
matter called weight or gravity. Bodies are heavy; you saw that in the case of water when
I placed it in the balance. Here I have what we call a weight [an iron half cwt.] - a
thing called a weight because in it the exercise of that power of pressing downward is
especially used for the purposes of weighing; and I have also one of these little inflated
India rubber bladders, which are very beautiful although very common (most beautiful
things are common), and I am going to put the weight upon it, to give you a sort of
illustration of the downward pressure of the iron, and of the power which the air
possesses of resisting that pressure; it may burst, but we must try to avoid that. [During
the last few observations the lecturer had succeeded in placing the half cwt. in a state
of quiescence upon the inflated India-rubber ball, which consequently assumed a shape very
much resembling a flat cheese with round edges.] There you see a bubble of air bearing
half a hundred-weight, and you must conceive for yourselves what a wonderful power there
must be to pull this weight downward, to sink it thus in the ball of air.
Let me now give you another illustration of this power. You know what a pendulum is. I
have one here, and if I set it swinging, it will continue to swing to and fro. Now I
wonder whether you can tell me why that body oscillates to and fro - that pendulum bob, as
it is sometimes called. Observe, if I hold the straight stick horizontally, as high as the
position of the ball at the two ends of its journey, you see that the ball is in a higher
position at the two extremities than it is when in the middle. Starting from one end of
the stick, the ball falls toward the centre, and then rising again to the opposite end, it
constantly tries to fall to the lowest point, swinging and vibrating most beautifully, and
with wonderful properties in other respects the time of its vibration, and so on - but
concerning which we will not now trouble ourselves.
If a gold leaf, or piece of thread, or any other substance were hung where this ball
is, it would swing to and fro in the same manner, and in the same time too. Do not be
startled at this statement; I repeat, in the same manner and in the same time, and you
will see by-and-by how this is. Now that power which caused the water to descend in the
balance - which made the iron weight press upon and flatten the bubble of air - which
caused the swinging to and fro of the pendulum, that power is entirely due to the
attraction which there is between the falling body and the earth. Let us be slow and
careful to comprehend this. It is not that the earth has any particular attraction toward
bodies which fall to it, but, that all these bodies possess an attraction every one toward
the other. It is not that the earth has any special power which these balls themselves
have not; for just as much power as the earth has to attract these two balls [dropping two
ivory balls], just so much power have they in proportion to their bulks to draw themselves
one to the other; and the only reason why they fall so quickly to the earth is owing to
its greater size. Now if I were to place these two balls near together, I should not be
able, by the most delicate arrangement of apparatus, to make you, or myself, sensible that
these balls did attract one another; and yet we know that such is the case, because if,
instead of taking a small ivory ball, we take a mountain, and put a ball like this near
it, we find that, owing to the vast size of the mountain as compared with the billiard
ball, the latter is drawn slightly toward it, showing clearly that an attraction does
exist, just as it did between the shell-lac which I rubbed and the piece of paper which
was overturned by it.
Now it is not very easy to make these things quite clear at the outset and I must take
care not to leave anything unexplained as I proceed, and, therefore, I must make you
clearly understand that all bodies are attracted to the earth, or, to use a more learned
term, gravitate. You will not mind my using this word, for when I say that this
penny-piece gravitates, I mean nothing more nor less than that it falls toward the earth,
and, if not intercepted, it would go on falling, falling, until it arrived at what we call
the centre of gravity of the earth, which I will explain to you by-and-by.
I want you to understand that this property of gravitation is never lost; that every
substance possesses it; that there is never any change in the quantity of it; and, first
of all, I will take as illustration a piece of marble. Now this marble has weight, as you
will see if I put it in these scales; it weighs the balance down, and if I take it off,
the balance goes back again and resumes its equilibrium. I can decompose this marble and
change it in the same manner as I can change ice into water and water into steam. I can
convert a part of it into its own steam easily, and show you that this steam from the
marble has the property of remaining in the same place at common temperatures, which water
steam has not. If I add a little liquid to the marble and decompose it6, I get
that which you see - [the lecturer here put several lumps of marble into a glass jar, and
poured water and then acid over them; the carbonic acid immediately commenced to escape
with considerable effervescence] - the appearance of boiling, which is only the separation
of one part of the marble from another. Now this [marble] steam, and that [water] steam,
and all other steams, gravitate just like any other substance does; they all are attracted
the one toward the other, and all fall toward the earth, and what I want you to see is
that this steam gravitates. I have here a large vessel placed upon a balance, and the
moment I pour this steam into it you see that the steam gravitates. Just watch the index,
and see whether it tilts over or not. [The lecturer here poured the carbonic acid out of
the glass in which it was being generated into the vessel suspended on the balance, when
the gravitation of the carbonic acid was at once apparent.] Look how it is going down. How
pretty that is! I poured nothing in but the invisible steam, or vapor, or gas which came
from the marble, but you see that part of the marble, although it has taken the shape of
air, still gravitates as it did before. Now will it weigh down that bit of paper? [placing
a piece of paper in the opposite scale.] Yes, more than that; it nearly weighs down this
bit of paper [placing another piece of paper in]. And thus you see that other forms of
matter besides solids and liquids tend to fall to the earth; and, therefore, you will
accept from me the fact that all things gravitate, whatever may be their form or
condition. Now here is another chemical test which is very readily applied. [Some of the
carbonic acid was poured from one vessel into another, and its presence in the latter
shown by introducing into it a lighted taper, which was immediately extinguished.] You see
from this result also that it gravitates. All these experiments show you that, tried by
the balance, tried by pouring like water from one vessel to another, this steam, or vapor,
or gas is, like all other things, attracted to the earth.
[Footnote 6: Add a little liquid to the marble and decompose it. Marble is composed of
carbonic acid and lime, and, in chemical language, is called carbonate of lime. When
sulphuric acid is added to it, the carbonic acid is set free, and the sulphuric acid
unites with the lime to form sulphate of lime. Carbonic acid, under ordinary
circumstances, is a colorless invisible gas, about half as heavy again as air. Dr. Faraday
first showed that under great pressure it could be obtained in a liquid state. Thilorier,
a French chemist, afterward found that it could be solidified.]
There is another point I want in the next place to draw your attention to. I have here
a quantity of shot; each of these falls separately, and each has its own gravitating
power, as you perceive when I let them fall loosely on a sheet of paper. If I put them
into a bottle, I collect them together as one mass, and philosophers have discovered that
there is a certain point in the middle of the whole collection of shots that may be
considered as the one point in which all their gravitating power is centred, and that
point they call the centre of gravity; it is not at all a bad name, and rather a short one
- the centre of gravity. Now suppose I take a sheet of pasteboard, or any other thing
easily dealt with, and run a bradawl through it at one corner, A, and Mr. Anderson holds
that up in his hand before us, and I then take a piece of thread and an ivory ball, and
hang that upon the awl, then the centre of gravity of both the pasteboard and the ball and
string are as near as they can get to the centre of the earth; that is to say, the whole
of the attracting power of the earth is, as it were, centred in a single point of the
cardboard, and this point is exactly below the point of suspension. All I have to do,
therefore, is to draw a line, A B, corresponding with the string, and we shall find that
the centre of gravity is somewhere in that line. But where? To find that out, all we have
to do is to take another place for the awl hang the plumb-line, and make the same
experiment, and there [at the point C] is the centre of gravity, - there where the two
lines which I have traced cross each other; and if I take that pasteboard and make a hole
with the bradawl through it at that point, you will see it will be supported in any
position in which it may be placed. Now, knowing that, what do I do when I try to stand
upon one leg? Do you not see that I push myself over to the left side, and quietly take up
the right leg, and thus bring some central point in my body over this left leg? What is
that point which I throw over? You will know at once that it is the centre of gravity -
that point in me where the whole gravitating force of my body is centred, and which I thus
bring in a line over my foot.
Here is a toy I happened to see the other day, which will, I think, serve to illustrate
our subject very well. That toy ought to lie something in this manner, and would do so if
it were uniform in substance; but you see it does not; it will get up again. And now
philosophy comes to our aid, and I am perfectly sure, without looking inside the figure,
that there is some arrangement by which the centre of gravity is at the lowest point when
the image is standing upright; and we may be certain, when I am tilting it over, that I am
lifting up the centre of gravity (a), and raising it from the earth. All this is effected
by putting a piece of lead inside the lower part of the image, and making the base of
large curvature, and there you have the whole secret. But what will happen if I try to
make the figure stand upon a sharp point? You observe I must get that point exactly under
the centre of gravity, or it will fall over thus [endeavoring unsuccessfully to balance
it]; and this, you see, is a difficult matter; I can not make it stand steadily; but if I
embarrass this poor old lady with a world of trouble, and hang this wire with bullets at
each end about her neck, it is very evident that, owing to there being those balls of lead
hanging down on either side, in addition to the lead inside, I have lowered the centre of
gravity, and now she will stand upon this point, and, what is more, she proves the truth
of our philosophy by standing sideways.
I remember an experiment which puzzled me very much when a boy. I read it in a
conjuring book, and this was how the problem was put to us: "How," as the book
said, "how to hang a pail of water, by means of a stick, upon the side of a
table". Now I have here a table, a piece of stick, and a pail, and the proposition
is, how can that pail be hung to the edge of this table? It is to be done, and can you at
all anticipate what arrangement I shall make to enable me to succeed? Why this. I take a
stick, and put it in the pail between the bottom and the horizontal piece of wood, and
thus give it a stiff handle, and there it is; and, what is more, the more water I put into
the pail, the better it will hang. It is very true that before I quite succeeded I had the
misfortune to push the bottoms of several pails out; but here it is hanging firmly, and
you now see how you can hang up the pail in the way which the conjuring books require.
Again, if you are really so inclined (and I do hope all of you are), you will find a
great deal of philosophy in this [holding up a cork and a pointed thin stick about a foot
long]. Do not refer to your toy-books, and say you have seen that before. Answer me
rather, if I ask, have you understood it before? It is an experiment which appeared very
wonderful to me when I was a boy. I used to take a piece of cork (and I remember I thought
at first that it was very important that it should be cut out in the shape of man, but by
degrees I got rid of that idea), and the problem was to balance it on the point of a
stick. Now you will see I have only to place two sharp-pointed sticks one each side, and
give it wings, thus, and you will find this beautiful condition fulfilled.
We come now to another point. All bodies, whether heavy or light, fall to the earth by
this force which we call gravity. By observation, moreover, we see that bodies do not
occupy the same time in falling; I think you will be able to see that this piece of paper
and that ivory ball fall with different velocities to the table [dropping them]; and if,
again, I take a feather and an ivory ball, and let them fall, you see they reach the table
or earth at different times; that is to say, the ball falls faster than the feather. Now
that should not be so, for all bodies do fall equally fast to the earth. There are one or
two beautiful points included in that statement. First of all, it is manifest that an
ounce, or a pound, or a ton, or a thousand tons, all fall equally fast, no one faster than
another: here are two balls of lead, a very light one and a very heavy one, and you
perceive they both fall to the earth in the same time. Now if I were to put into a little
bag a number of these balls sufficient to make up a bulk equal to the large one, they
would also fall in the same time; for it an avalanche fall from the mountains, the rocks,
snow, and ice, together falling toward the earth, fall with the same velocity, whatever be
their size.
I can not take a better illustration of this than of gold leaf, because it brings
before us the reason of this apparent difference in the time of the fall. Here is a piece
of gold leaf. Now if I take a lump of gold and this gold leaf, and let them fall through
the air together, you see that the lump of gold - the sovereign or coin - will fall much
faster than the gold leaf. But why? They are both gold, whether sovereign or gold leaf.
Why should they not fall to the earth with the same quickness? They would do so, but that
the air around our globe interferes very much where we have the piece of gold so extended
and enlarged as to offer much obstruction on falling through it. It will, however, show
you that gold leaf does fall as fast when the resistance of the air is excluded; for if I
take a piece of gold leaf and hang it in the centre of a bottle so that the gold, and the
bottle, and the air within shall all have an equal chance of falling, then the gold leaf
will fall as fast as anything else. And if I suspend the bottle containing the gold leaf
to a string, and set it oscillating like a pendulum, I may make it vibrate as hard as I
please and the gold leaf will not be disturbed, but will swing as steadily as a piece of
iron would do; and I might even swing it round my head with any degree of force, and it
would remain undisturbed. Or I can try another kind of experiment: if I raise the gold
leaf in this way [pulling the bottle up to the ceiling of the theatre by means of a cord
and pulley, and then suddenly letting it fall within a few inches of the lecture table],
and allow it then to fall from the ceiling downward (I will put something beneath to catch
it, supposing I should be maladroit), you will perceive that the gold leaf is not in the
least disturbed. The resistance of the air having been avoided, the glass bottle and gold
leaf all fall exactly in the same time.
Here is another illustration: I have hung a piece of gold leaf in the upper part of
this long glass vessel, and I have the means by a little arrangement at the top, of
letting the gold leaf loose. Before we let it loose we will remove the air by means of an
air-pump, and, while that is being done, let me show you another experiment of the same
kind. Take a penny piece, or a half crown, and a round piece of paper a trifle smaller in
diameter than the coin, and try them side by side to see whether they fall at the same
time [dropping them]. You see they do not - the penny-piece goes down first. But, not
place this paper flat on the top of the coin, so that it shall not meet with any
resistance from the air, and upon then dropping them you see they do both fall in the same
time [exhibiting the effect]. I dare say, if I were to put this piece of gold leaf,
instead of the paper, on the coin, it would do as well. It is very difficult to lay the
gold leaf so flat that the air shall not get under it and lift it up in falling, and I am
rather doubtful as to the success of this, because the gold leaf is puckery, but will risk
the experiment. There they go together! [letting them fall] and you see at once that they
both reach the table at the same moment.
We have now pumped the air out of the vessel, and you will perceive that the gold leaf
will fall as quickly in this vacuum as the coin does in the air. I am now going to let it
loose, and you must watch to see how rapidly it falls. There! [letting the gold loose].
there it is, falling as gold should fall.
I am sorry to see our time for parting is drawing so near. As we proceed, I intend to
write upon the board behind me certain words, so as to recall to your minds what we have
already examined; and I put the word Forces as a heading, and I will then add beneath the
names of the special forces according to the order in which we consider them; and although
I fear that I have not sufficiently pointed out to you the more important circumstances
connected with the force of Gravitation, especially the law which governs its attraction
(for which, I think, I must take up a little time at our next meeting), still I will put
that word on the board, and hope you will now remember that we have in some degree
considered the force of gravitation - that force which causes all bodies to attract each
other when they are at sensible distances apart, and tends to draw them together.
Lecture II: Gravitation - Cohesion
Do me the favor to pay me as much attention as you did at our last meeting, and I shall
not repent of that which I have proposed to undertake. It will be impossible for us to
consider the Laws of Nature, and what they effect, unless we now and then give our sole
attention, so as to obtain a clear idea upon the subject. Give me now that attention, and
then I trust we shall not part without our knowing something about those laws, and the
manner in which they act. You recollect, upon the last occasion, I explained that all
bodies attracted each other, and that this power we called gravitation. I told you that
when we brought these two bodies [two equal-sized ivory balls suspended by threads] near
together, they attracted each other, and that we might suppose that the whole power of
this attraction was exerted between their respective centres of gravity; and, furthermore,
you learned from me that if, instead of a small ball I took a larger one, like that
[changing one of the balls for a much larger one], there was much more of this attraction
exerted; or, if I made this ball larger and larger, until, if it were possible, it became
as large as the Earth itself - or I might take the Earth itself as the large ball - that
then the attraction would become so powerful as to cause them to rush together in this
manner [dropping the ivory ball]. You sit there upright, and I stand upright here, because
we keep our centres of gravity properly balanced with respect to the earth; and I need not
tell you that on the other side of this world the people are standing and moving about
with their feet toward our feet, in a reversed position as compared with us, and all by
means of this power of gravitation to the centre of the earth.
I must not, however, leave the subject of gravitation without telling you something
about its laws and regularity; and, first, as regards its power with respect to the
distance that bodies are apart. If I take one of these balls and place it within an inch
of the other, they attract each other with a certain power. If I hold it at a greater
distance off, they attract with less power; and if I hold it at a greater distance still,
their attraction is still less. Now this fact is of the greatest consequence; for, knowing
this law, philosophers have discovered most wonderful things. You know that there is a
planet, Uranus, revolving round the sun with us, but eighteen hundred millions of miles
off, and because there is another planet as far off as three thousand millions of miles,
this law attraction, or gravitation, still holds good, and philosophers actually
discovered this latter planet, Neptune, by reason of the effects of its attraction at this
overwhelming distance. Now I want you clearly to understand what this law is. They say
(and they are right) that two bodies attract each other inversely as the square of the
distance - a sad jumble of words until you understand them; but I think we shall soon
comprehend what this law is, and what is the meaning of the "inverse square of the
distance."
I have here a lamp, A, shining most intensely upon this disc, B, C, D, and this light
acts as a sun by which I can get a shadow from this little screen B F (merely a square
piece of card), which, as you know, when I place it close to the large screen, just
shadows as much of it as is exactly equal to its own size; but now let me take this card,
E, which is equal to the other one in size, and place it midway between the lamp and the
screen; now look at the size of the shadow B D - it is four times the original size. Here,
then, comes the "inverse square of the distance." This distance, A E, is one,
and that distance, A B is two, but that size E being one, this size B D of shadow is four
instead of two, which is the square of the distance, and, if I put the screen at one-third
of the distance from the lamp, the shadow on the large screen would be nine times the
size. Again, if I hold this screen here, at B F, a certain amount of light falls on it;
and if I hold it nearer the lamp at E, more light shines upon it. And you see at once how
much - exactly the quantity which I have shut off from the part of this screen, B D, now
in shadow; moreover, you see that if I put a single screen here, at G, by the side of the
shadow, it can only receive one-fourth of the proportion of light which is obstructed.
That, then, is what is meant by the inverse of the square of the distance. This screen E
is the brightest because it is the nearest, and there is the whole secret of this curious
expression, inversely as the square of the distance. Now if you can not perfectly
recollect this when you go home, get a candle and throw a shadow of something - your
profile, if you like - on the wall and then recede or advance, and you will find that your
shadow is exactly in proportion to the square of the distance you are off the wall; and
then, if you consider how much light shines on you at one distance, and how much at
another, you get the inverse accordingly. So it is as regards the attraction of these two
balls; they attract according to the square of the distance, inversely. I want you to try
and remember these words, and then you will be able to go into all the calculations of
astronomers as to the planets and other bodies, and tell why they move so fast, and why
they go round the sun without falling into it and be prepared to enter upon many other
interesting inquiries of the like nature.
Let us now leave this subject which I have written upon the board under the word Force
- Gravitation - and go a step father. All bodies attract each other at sensible distances.
I showed you the electric attraction on the last occasion (through I did not call it so);
that attracts at a distance; and in order to make our progress a little more gradual,
suppose I take a few iron particles [dropping some small fragments of iron on the table].
There! I have already told you that in all cases where bodies fall it is the particles
that are attracted. You may consider these, then, as separate particles magnified, so as
to be evident to your sight; they are loose from each other - they all gravitate - they
all fall to the earth - for the force of gravitation never fails. Now I have here a centre
of power which I will not name at present, and when these particles are placed upon it,
see what an attraction they have for each other.
Here I have an arch of iron filings regularly built up like an iron bridge, because I
have put them within a sphere of action which will cause them to attract each other. See!
I could let a mouse run through it; and yet, if I try to do the same thing with them here
[on the table], they do not attract each other at all. It is that [the magnet] which makes
them hold together. Now just as these iron particles hold together in the form of an
elliptical bridge, so do the different particles of iron which constitute this nail hold
together and make it one. And here is a bar of iron; why, it is only because the different
parts of this iron are so wrought as to keep close together by the attraction between the
particles that it is held together in one mass. It is kept together, in fact, merely by
the attraction of one particle to another, and that is the point I want now to illustrate.
If I take a piece of flint, and strike it with a hammer, and break it thus [breaking off a
piece of the flint], I have done nothing more than separate the particles which compose
these two pieces so far apart that their attraction is too weak to cause them to hold
together, and it is only for that reason that there are now two pieces in the place of
one. I will show you an experiment to prove that this attraction does still exist in those
particles; for here is a piece of glass (for what was true of the flint and the bar of
iron is true of the piece of glass, and is true of every other solid - they are all held
together in the lump by the attraction between their parts), and I can show you the
attraction between its separate particles; for if I take these portions of glass which I
have reduced to very fine powder, you see that I can actually build them up into a solid
wall by pressure between two flat surfaces. The power which I thus have of building up
this wall is due to the attraction of the particles, forming, as it were, the cement which
holds them together; and so in this case, where I have taken no very great pains to bring
the particles together, you see perhaps a couple of ounces of finely pounded glass
standing as an upright wall: is not this attraction most wonderful? That bar of iron one
inch square has such power of attraction in its particles - giving to it such strength -
that it will hold up twenty tons' weight before the little set of particles in the small
space equal to one division across which it can be pulled apart will separate. In this
manner suspension bridges and chains are held together by the attraction of their
particles, and I am going to make an experiment which will show how strong is this
attraction of the particles. [The lectured here placed his foot on a loop of wire fastened
to a support above, and swung with his whole weight resting upon it for some moments.] You
see, while hanging here, all my weight is supported by these little particles of the wire,
just as in pantomimes they sometimes suspend gentlemen and damsels.
How can we make this attraction of the particles a little more simple? There are many
things which, if brought together properly, will show this attraction. Here is a boy's
experiment (and I like a boy's experiment). Get a tobacco-pipe, fill it with lead, melt
it, and then pour it out upon a stone, and thus get a clean piece of lead (this is a
better plan than scraping it; scraping alters the condition of the surface of the lead). I
have here some pieces of lead which I melted this morning for the sake of making them
clean. Now these pieces of lead hang together by the attraction of their particles, and it
I press these two separate pieces close together, so as to bring their particles within
the sphere of attraction, you will see how soon they become one. I have merely to give
them a good squeeze, and draw the upper piece slightly round at the same time, and here
they are as one, and all the bending and twisting I can give them will not separate them
again; I have joined the lead together, not with solder, but simply by means of the
attraction of the particles.
This, however, is not the best way of bringing those particles together; we have many
better plans than that; and I will show you one that will do very well for juvenile
experiments. There is some alum crystallized very beautifully by nature (for all things
are far more beautiful in their natural than their artificial form), and here I have some
of the same alum broken into fine powder. In it I have destroyed that force of which I
have placed the name of this board - Cohesion, or the attraction exerted between the
particles of bodies to hold them together. Now I am going to show you that if we take this
powdered alum and some hot water, and mix them together, I shall dissolve the alum; all
the particles will be separated by the water far more completely than they are here in the
powder; but then, being in the water, they will have the opportunity as it cools (for that
is the condition which favors their coalescence) of uniting together again and forming one
mass7.
[Footnote 7: Crystallization of alum. The solution must be saturated - that is, it must
contain as much alum as can possibly be dissolved. In making the solution, it is best to
add powdered alum to hot water as long as it dissolves; and when no more is taken up,
allow the solution to stand a few minutes, and then pour it off from the dirt and
undissolved alum.]
Now, having brought the alum into solution, I will pour it into this glass basin, and
you will, to-morrow, find that these particles of alum which I have put into the water,
and so separated that they are no longer solid, will, as the water cools, come together
and cohere, and by to-morrow morning we shall have a great deal of the alum crystallized
out - that is to say, come back to the solid form. [The lecturer here poured a little of
the hot solution of alum into the glass dish, and when the latter had thus been made warm,
the remainder of the solution was added.] I am now doing that which I advise you to do if
you use a glass vessel, namely warming it slowly and gradually; and in repeating this
experiment, do as I do - pour the liquid out gently, leaving all the dirt behind in the
basin; and remember that the more carefully and quietly you make this experiment at home,
the better the crystals. To-morrow you will see the particles of alum drawn together; and
if I put two pieces of coke in some part of the solution (the coke ought first to be
washed very clean, and dried), you will find to-morrow that we shall have a beautiful
crystallization over the coke, making it exactly resemble a natural mineral.
Now how curiously our ideas expand by watching these conditions of the attraction of
cohesion! how many new phenomena it gives us beyond those of the attraction of
gravitation! See how it gives us great strength. The things we deal with in building up
the structures on the earth are of strength - we use iron, stone, and other things of
great strength; and only think that all those structures you have about you - think of the
Great Eastern, if you please, which is of such size and power as to be almost more than
man can manage - are the result of this power of cohesion and attraction.
I have here a body in which I believe you will see a change taking place in its
condition of cohesion at the moment it is made. It is at first yellow; it then becomes a
fine crimson red. Just watch when I pour these two liquids together - both colorless as
water. [The lecturer here mixed together solutions of perchloride of mercury and iodide of
potassium, when a yellow precipitate of biniodide of mercury fell down, which almost
immediately became crimson red.] Now there is a substance which is very beautiful, but see
how it is changing color. It was reddish-yellow at first, but it has now become red8.
I have previously prepared a little of this red substance, which you see formed in the
liquid, and have put some of it upon paper [exhibiting several sheets of paper coated with
scarlet biniodide of mercury9]. There it is - the same substance spread upon
paper; and there, too, is the same substance; and here is some more of it [exhibiting a
piece of paper as large as the other sheets, but having only very little red color on it,
the greater part being yellow] - a little more of it, you will say. Do not be mistaken;
there is as much upon the surface of one of these pieces of paper as upon the other. What
you see yellow is the same thing as the red body, only the attraction of cohesion is in a
certain degree changed, for I will take this red body, and apply heat to it (you may
perhaps see a little smoke arise, but that is of no consequence). and if you look at it it
will first of all darken - but see how it is becoming yellow. I have now made it all
yellow, and, what is more, it will remain so; but if I take any hard substance, and rub
the yellow part with it, it will immediately go back again to the red condition
[exhibiting the experiment]. There it is. You see the red is not put back, but brought
back by the change in the substance. Now [warming it over the spirit lamp] here it is
becoming yellow again, and that is all because its attraction of cohesion is changed. And
what will you say to me when I tell you that this piece of common charcoal is just the
same thing, only differently coalesced, as the diamonds which you wear? (I have put a
specimen outside of a piece of straw which was charred in a particular way - it is just
like back lead.) Now this charred straw, this charcoal, and these diamonds, are all of
them the same substance, changed but in their properties as respects the force of
cohesion.
[Footnote 8: Red precipitate of biniodide of mercury. A little care is necessary to
obtain this precipitate. The solution of iodide of potassium should be added to the
solution of perchloride of mercury (corrosive sublimate) very gradually. The red
precipitate which first falls is redissolved when the liquid is stirred: when a little
more of the iodide of potassium is added a pale red precipitate is formed, which, on the
farther addition of the iodide, changes into the brilliant scarlet biniodide of mercury.
If too much iodide of potassium is added, the scarlet precipitate disappears, and a
colorless solution is left.]
[Footnote 9: Paper coated with scarlet biniodide of mercury. In order to fix the
biniodide on paper, it must be mixed with a little weak gum water, and then spread over
the paper, which must be dried without heat. Biniodide of mercury is said to be
dimorphous; that is, is able to assume two different forms.]
Here is a piece of glass [producing a piece of plate-glass about two inches square]. (I
shall want this afterward to look to and examine its internal condition), and here is some
of the same sort of glass differing only in its power of cohesion, because while yet
melted it had been dropped into cold water [exhibiting a "Prince Rupert's drop,"10],
and if I take one of these little tear-like pieces and break off ever so little from the
point, the whole will at once burst and fall to pieces. I will now break off a piece of
this. [The lecturer nipped off a small piece from the end of one of Rupert's drops,
whereupon the whole immediately fell to pieces.] There! you see the solid glass has
suddenly become powder, and more than that, it has knocked a hole in the glass vessel in
which it was held. I can show the effect better in this bottle of water, and it is very
likely the whole bottle will go. [A 6-oz. vial was filled with water, and a Rupert's drop
placed in it with the point of the tail just projecting out; upon breaking the tip off,
the drop burst, and the shock, being transmitted through the water to the sides of the
bottle, shattered the latter to pieces.]
[Footnote 10: "Prince Rupert's Drops." These are made by pouring drops of a
melted green glass into cold water. They were not, as is commonly supposed, invented by
Prince Rupert, but were first brought to England by him in 1660. They excited a great deal
of curiosity, and were considered "a king of miracle in nature."]
Here is another form of the same kind of experiment. I have here some more glass which
has not been annealed [showing some thick glass vessels]11, and if I take one
of these glass vessels and drop a piece of pounded glass into it (or I will take some of
these small pieces of rock crystal; they have the advantage of being harder than glass),
and so make the least scratch upon the inside, the whole bottle will break to pieces - it
can not hold together. [The lecturer here dropped a small fragment of rock crystal into
one of these glass vessels, when the bottom immediately came out and feel upon the plate.]
There! it goes through, just as it would through a sieve.
[Footnote 11: Thick glass vessels - They are called Proofs or Bologna phials.]
Now I have shown you these things for the purpose of bringing your minds to see that
bodies are not merely held together by this power of cohesion, but that they are held
together in very curious ways. And suppose I take some things that are held together by
this force, and examine them more minutely. I will first take a bit of glass, and if I
give it a blow with a hammer I shall just break it to pieces. You saw how it was in the
case of the flint when I broke the piece off; a piece of a similar kind would come off,
just as you would expect; and if I were to break it up still more, it would be, as you
have seen, simply a collection of small particles of no definite shape or form. But
supposing I take some other thing - this stone, for instance [taking a piece of mica12],
and if I hammer this stone I may batter it a great deal before I can break it up. I may
even bend it without breaking it - that is to say, I may bend it in one particular
direction without breaking it much, although I feel in my hands that I am doing it some
injury. But now, if I take it by the edges, I find that it breaks up into leaf after leaf
in a most extraordinary manner. Why should it break up like that? Not because all stones
do, or all crystals; for there is some salt - you know what common salt is13;
here is a piece of this salt, which by natural circumstances has had its particles so
brought together that they have been allowed free opportunity of combining or coalescing,
and you shall see what happens if I take this piece of salt and break it. It does not
break as flint did, or as the mica did, but with a clean sharp angle and exact surfaces,
beautiful and glittering as diamonds [breaking it by gentle blows with a hammer]; there is
a square prism which I may break up into a square cube. You see these fragments are all
square; one side may be longer than the other, but they will only split up so as to form
square or oblong pieces with cubical sides. Now I go a little farther, and I find another
stone [Iceland or calc-spar]14 which I may break in a similar way, but not with
the same result. Here is a piece which I have broken off, and you see there are plain
surfaces perfectly regular with respect to each other, but it is not cubical - it is what
we call a rhomboid. It still breaks in three directions most beautifully and regularly
with polished surfaces, but with sloping sides, not like the salt. Why not? It is very
manifest that this is owing to the attraction of the particles one for the other being
less in the direction in which they give way than in other directions. I have on the table
before me a number of little bits of calcareous spar, and I recommend each of you to take
a piece home, and then you can take a knife and try to divide it in the direction of any
of the surfaces already existing. You will be able to do it at once; but if you try to cut
it across the crystals, you can not; by hammering you may bruise and break it up, but you
can only divide it into these beautiful little rhomboids.
[Footnote 12: Mica. A silicate of alumina and magnesia. It has a bright metallic
lustre; hence its name, from mico, to shine.]
[Footnote 13: Common salt or chloride of sodium crystallizes in the form of solid
cubes, which, aggregated together, form a mass, which may be broken up into the separate
cubes.]
[Footnote 14: Iceland or calc-spar. Native carbonate of lime in its primitive
crystalline form.]
Now I want you to understand a little more how this is, and for this purpose I am going
to use the electric light again. You see we can not look into the middle of a body this
piece of glass. We perceive the outside form and the inside form, and we look through it,
but we can not well find out how these forms become so, and I want you, therefore, to take
a lesson in the way in which we use a ray of light for the purpose of seeing what is in
the interior of bodies. Light is a thing which is, so to say, attracted by every substance
that gravitates (and we done not know any thing that does not). All matters affects light
more or less by what we may consider as a kind of attraction, and I have arranged a very
simple experiment upon the floor of the room for the purpose of illustrating this. I have
put into that basin a few things which those who are in the body of the theatre will not
be able to see, and I am going to make use of this power which matter possesses of
attracting a ray of light. If Mr. Anderson pours some water, gently and steadily, into the
basin, the water will attract the rays of light downward, and the piece of silver and the
sealing-wax will appear to rise up into the sight of those who were before not high enough
to see over the side of the basin to its bottom. [Mr. Anderson here poured water into the
basin, and upon the lecturer asking whether any body could see the silver and sealing-wax,
he was answered by a general affirmative.] Now I suppose that every body can see that they
are not at all disturbed, while from the way they appear to have risen up you would
imagine the bottom of the basin and the articles in it were two inches thick, although
they are only one of our small silver dishes and a piece of sealing-wax which I have put
there. The light which now goes to you from that piece of silver was obstructed by the
edge of the basin when there was no water there, and you were unable to see anything of
it; but when we poured in water the rays were attracted down by it over the edge of the
basin, and you were thus enabled to see the articles at the bottom.
I have shown you this experiment first, so that you might understand how glass attracts
light, and might then see how other substances like rock-salt and calcareous spar, mica,
and other stones, would affect the light; and, if Dr. Tyndall will be good enough to let
us use his light again, we will first of all show you how it may be bent by a piece of
glass. [The electric lamp was again lit, and the beam of parallel rays of light which it
emitted was bent about and decomposed by means of the prism.] Now, here you see, if I send
the light through this piece of plain glass, A, it goes straight through without being
bent (unless the glass be held obliquely, and then the phenomenon becomes more
complicated); but if I take this piece of glass, B [a prism], you see it will show a very
different effect. It no longer goes to that wall, but it is bent to this screen, C, and
how much more beautiful it is now [throwing the prismatic spectrum on the screen]. This
ray of light is bent out of its course by the attraction of the glass upon it; and you see
I can turn and twist the rays to and fro in different parts of the room just as I please.
Now it goes there, now here. [The lecturer projected the prismatic spectrum about the
theatre.] Here I have the rays once more bent on to the screen, and you see how
wonderfully and beautifully that piece of glass not only bends the light by virtue of its
attraction, but actually splits it up into different colors. Now I want you to understand
that this piece of glass [the prism], being perfectly uniform in its internal structure,
tells us about the action of these other bodies which are not uniform - which do not
merely cohere, but also have within them, in different parts, different degrees of
cohesion, and thus attract and bend the light with varying powers. We will now let the
light pass through one or two of these things which I just now showed you broke so
curiously: and, first of all, I will take a piece of mica. Here, you see, is our ray of
light: we have first to make it what we call polarized; but about that you need not
trouble yourselves; it is only to make our illustration more clear. Here, then, we have
our polarized ray of light, and I can so adjust it as to make the screen upon which it is
shining either light or dark, although I have nothing in the course of this ray of light
but what is perfectly transparent [turning the analyzer round]. I will now make it so that
it is quite dark, and we will, in the first instance, put a piece of common glass into the
polarized ray so as to show you that it does not enable the light to get through. You see
the screen remains dark. The glass, then, internally, has no effect upon light. [The glass
was removed and a piece of mica introduced.] Now there is the mica which we split up so
curiously into leaf after leaf, and see how that enables the light to pass through to the
screen, and how, as Dr. Tyndall turns it round in his hand, you have those different
colors, pink, and purple, and green, coming and going most beautifully; not that the mica
is more transparent than the glass, but because of the different manner in which its
particles are arranged by the force of cohesion.
Now we will see how calcareous spar acts upon this light - that stone which split up
into rhombs, and of which you are each of you going to take a little piece home. [The mica
was removed, and a piece of calc-spar introduced at A.] See how that turns the light round
and round, and produces these rings and that black cross. Look at those colors: are they
not most beautiful for you and for me? (for I enjoy things as much as you do). In what a
wonderful manner they open out to us internal arrangement of the particles of this
calcareous spar by the force of cohesion.
And now I will show you another experiment. Here is that piece of glass which before
had no action upon the light. You shall see what it will do when we apply pressure to it.
Here, then, we have our ray of polarized light, and I will first of all show you that the
glass has no effect upon it in its ordinary state; when I place it in the course of the
light, the screen still remains dark. Now Dr. Tyndall will press that bit of glass between
three little points, one point against two, so as to bring a strain upon the parts, and
you will see what a curious effect that has. [Upon the screen two white dots gradually
appeared.] Ah! these points show the position of the strain; in these parts the force of
cohesion is being exerted in a different degree to what it is in the other parts, and
hence it allows the light to pass through. How beautiful that is! how it makes the light
come through some parts and leaves it dark in others, and all because we weaken the force
of cohesion between particle and particle. Whether you have this mechanical power of
straining, or whether we take other means, we get the same result; and, indeed, I will
show you by another experiment that if we heat the glass in one part, it will alter its
internal structure and produce a similar effect. Here is a piece of common glass, and if I
insert this in the path of the polarized ray, I believe it will do nothing. There is the
common glass [introducing it]. No light passes through; the screen remains quite dark; but
I am going to warm this glass in the lamp, and you know yourselves that when you pour warm
water upon glass you put a strain upon it sufficient to break it sometimes something like
there was in the case of the Prince Rupert's drops. [The glass was warmed in the spirit
lamp, and again placed across the ray of light.] Now you see how beautifully the light
goes through those parts which are hot, making dark and light lines just as the crystal
did, and all because of the alteration I have effected in its internal condition; for
these dark and light parts are a proof of the presence of forces acting and dragging in
different directions within the solid mass.
Lecture III: Cohesion - Chemical Affinity
We will first return for a few minutes to one of the experiments made yesterday. You
remember what we put together on that occasion - powdered alum and warm water. Here is one
of the basins then used. Nothing has been done to it since; but you will find, on
examining it, that it no longer contains any powder, but a number of beautiful crystals.
Here also are the pieces of coke which I put into the other basin; they have a fine mass
of crystals about them. That other basin I will leave as it is. I will not pour the water
from it, because it will show you that the particles of alum have done something more than
merely crystallize together. They have pushed the dirty matter from them, laying it around
the outside or outer edge of the lower crystals squeezed out, as it were, by the strong
attraction which the particles of alum have for each other.
And now for another experiment. We have already gained a knowledge of the manner in
which the particles of bodies - of solid bodies - attract each other, and we have learned
that it makes calcareous spar, and so forth, crystallize in these regular forms. Now let
me gradually lead your minds to a knowledge of the means we possess of making this
attraction alter a little in its force; either of increasing, or diminishing, or,
apparently, of destroying it altogether. I will take this piece of iron [a rod of iron
about two feet long and a quarter of an inch in diameter]. It has at present a great deal
of strength, due to its attraction of cohesion; but if Mr. Anderson will make part of this
red-hot in the fire, we shall then find that it will become soft, just as sealing-wax will
when heated, and we shall also find that the more it is heated the softer it becomes. Ah!
but what does soft mean? Why, that the attraction between the particles is so weakened
that it is no longer sufficient to resist the power we bring to bear upon it. [Mr.
Anderson handed to the lecturer the iron rod, with one end red-hot, which he showed could
be easily twisted about with a pair of pliers.] You see I now find no difficulty in
bending this end about as I like, whereas I can not bend the cold part at all. And you
know how the smith takes a piece of iron and heats it in order to render it soft for his
purpose: he acts upon our principle of lessening the adhesion of the particles, although
he is not exactly acquainted with the terms by which we express it.
And now we have another point to examine, and this water is again a very good substance
to take as an illustration (as philosophers we call it all water, even though it be in the
form of ice or steam). Why is this water hard? [pointing to a block of ice]; because the
attraction of the particles to each other is sufficient to make them retain their places
in opposition to force applied to it. But what happens when we make the ice warm? Why, in
that case we diminish to such a large extent the power of attraction that the solid
substance is destroyed altogether. Let me illustrate this: I will take a red hot ball of
iron [Mr. Anderson, by means of a pair of tongs, handed to the lecturer a red-hot ball of
iron, about two inches in diameter], because it will serve as a convenient source of heat
[placing the red-hot iron in the centre of the block of ice]. You see I am now melting the
ice where the iron touches it. You see the iron sinking into it; and while part of the
solid water is becoming liquid, the heat of the ball is rapidly going off. A certain part
of the water is actually rising in steam, the attraction of some of the particles is so
much diminished that they can not even hold together in the liquid form, but escape as
vapor. At the same time, you see I can not melt all this ice by the heat contained in this
ball. In the course of a very short time I shall find it will have become quite cold.
Here is the water which we have produced by destroying some of the attraction which
existed between the particles of the ice, for below a certain temperature the particles of
water increase in their mutual attraction and become ice; and above a certain temperature
the attraction decreases and the water becomes steam. And exactly the same thing happens
with platinum, and nearly every substance in nature; if the temperature is increased to a
certain point it becomes liquid and a farther increase converts it into a gas. Is it not a
glorious thing for us to look at the sea, the rivers, and so forth, and to know that this
same body in the northern regions is all solid ice and icebergs, while here, in a warmer
climate, it has its attraction of cohesion so much diminished as to be liquid water? Well,
in diminishing this force of attraction between the particles of ice, we made use of
another force, namely, that of heat; and I want you now to understand that this force of
heat is always concerned when water passes from the solid to the liquid state. If I melt
ice in other ways I can not do without heat (for we have the means of making ice liquid
without heat - that is to say, without using heat as a direct cause). Suppose, for
illustration, I make a vessel out of this piece of tinfoil [bending the foil up into the
shape of a dish]. I am making it metallic, because I want the heat which I am about to
deal with to pass readily through it; and I am going to pour a little water on this board,
and then place the tin vessel on it. Now if I put some of this ice into the metal dish,
and then proceed to make it liquid by any of the various means we have at our command, it
still must take the necessary quantity of heat from something, and in this case it will
take the heat from the tray, and from the water underneath, and from the other things
round about. Well, a little salt added to the ice has the power of causing it to melt, and
we shall very shortly see the mixture become quite fluid, and you will then find that the
water beneath will be frozen - frozen because it has been forced to give up hat heat which
is necessary to keep it in the liquid state to the ice on becoming liquid. I remember
once, when I was a boy, hearing of a trick in a country ale-house: the point was how to
melt ice in a quart pot by the fire and freeze it to the stool. Well, the way they did it
was this: they put some pounded ice in a pewter pot, and added some salt to it, and the
consequence was that when the salt was mixed with it, the ice in the pot melted (they did
not tell me any thing about the salt and they set the pot by the fire, just to make the
result more mysterious), and in a short time the pot and the stool were frozen together,
as we shall very shortly find it to be the case here, and all because salt has the power
of lessening the attraction between the particles of ice. Here you see the tin dish is
frozen to the board; I can even lift the little stool up by it.
This experiment can not, I think, fail to impress upon your minds the fact that
whenever a solid body loses some of that force of attraction by means of which it remains
solid, heat is absorbed; and if, on the other hand, we convert a liquid into a solid, e.
g., water into ice, a corresponding amount of heat is given out. I have an experiment
showing this to be the case. Here is a bulb, A, filled with air, the tube from which dips
into some colored liquid in the vessel B. And I dare say you know that if I put my hand on
the bulb A, and warm it, the colored liquid which is now standing in the tube at C will
travel forward. Now we have discovered a means, by great care and research into the
properties of various bodies, of preparing a solution of a salt15 which, if
shaken or disturbed, will at once become a solid; and as I explained to you just now (for
what is true of water is true of every other liquid), by reason of its becoming solid heat
is evolved, and I can make this evident to you by pouring it over this bulb; there! it is
becoming solid; and look at the colored liquid, how it is being driven down the tube, and
how it is bubbling out through the water at the end; and so we learn this beautiful law of
our philosophy, that whenever we diminish the attraction of cohesion we absorb heat, and
whenever we increase that attraction heat is evolved. This, then, is a great step in
advance, for you have learned a great deal in addition to the mere circumstance that
particles attract each other. But you must not now suppose that because they are liquid
they have lost their attraction of cohesion; for here is the fluid mercury, and if I pour
it from one vessel into another, I find that it will form a stream from the bottle down to
the glass - a continuous rod of fluid mercury, the particles of which have attraction
sufficient to make them hold together all the way through the air down to the glass
itself; and if I pour water quietly from a jug, I can cause it to run in a continuous
stream in the same manner. Again: let me put a little water on this piece of plate glass,
and then take another plate of glass and put it on the water; there! the upper plate is
quite free to move, gliding about on the lower one from side to side; and yet, if I take
hold of the upper plate and lift it up straight, the cohesion is so great that the lower
one is held up by it. See how it runs about as I move the upper one, and this is all owing
to the strong attraction of the particles of the water. Let me show you another
experiment. If I take a little soap and water - not that the soap makes the particles of
the water more adhesive one for the other, but it certainly has the power of continuing in
a better manner the attraction of the particles (and let me advise you, when about to
experiment with soap bubbles, to take care to have every thing lean and soapy). I will now
blow a bubble, and that I may be able to talk and blow a bubble too, I will take a plate
with a little of the soapsuds in it, and will just soap the edges of the pipe and blow a
bubble on to the plate. Now there is our bubble. Why does it hold together in this manner?
Why, because the water of which it is composed has an attraction of particle for particle
- so great, indeed, that it gives to this bubble the very power of an India-rubber ball;
for you see; if I introduce one end of this glass tube into the bubble, that it has the
power of contracting so powerfully as to force enough air through the tube to blow out a
light; the light is blown out. And look! see how the bubble is disappearing - see how it
is getting smaller and smaller.
[Footnote 15: Solution of a salt. Acetate of soda. A solution saturated, or nearly so,
at the boiling point, is necessary, and it must be allowed to cool, and remain at rest
until the experiment is made.]
There are twenty other experiments I might show you to illustrate this power of
cohesion of the particles of liquids. For instance, what would you propose to me if,
having lost the stopper out of this alcohol bottle, I should want to close it speedily
with something near at hand. Well, a bit of paper would not do, but a piece of linen cloth
would, or some of this cotton wool which I have here. I will put a tuft of it into the
neck of the alcohol bottle, and you see, when I turn it upside down, that it is perfectly
well stoppered so far as the alcohol is concerned; the air can pass through, but the
alcohol can not. And it I were to take an oil vessel this plan would do equally well, for
in former times they used to send us oil from Italy in flasks stoppered only with cotton
wool (at the present time the cotton is put in after the oil has arrived here, but
formerly it used to be sent so stoppered). Now if it were not for the particles of liquid
cohering together, this alcohol would run out; and if I had time I could have shown you a
vessel with the top, bottom, and sides altogether formed like a sieve, and yet it would
hold water, owing to the cohesion.
You have now seen that the solid water can become fluid by the addition of heat, owing
to this lessening the attractive force between its particles, and yet you see that there
is a good deal of attractive force remaining behind. I want now to take you another step
beyond. We saw that if we continued applying heat to the water (as indeed happened with
our piece of ice here), that we did at last break up that attraction which holds the
liquid together, and I am about to take some other (any other liquid would do, but ether
makes a better experiment for my purpose) in order to illustrate what will happen when
this cohesion is broken up. Now this liquid ether, if exposed to a very low temperature,
will become a solid; but if we apply heat to it, it becomes vapor; and I want to show you
the enormous bulk of the substance in this new form: when we make ice into water, we
lessen its bulk; but when we convert water into steam, we increase it to an enormous
extent. You see it is very clear that as I apply heat to the liquid diminish its
attraction of cohesion; it is now boiling, and I will set fire to the vapor, so that you
may be enabled to judge of the space occupied by the ether in this form by the size of its
flame; and you now see what an enormously bulky flame I get from that small volume of
ether below. The heat from the spirit lamp is now being consumed, not in making the ether
any warmer, but in converting it into vapor; and if I desired to catch this vapor and
condense it (as I could without much difficulty), I should have to do the same as If I
wished to convert steam into water and water into ice: in either case it would be
necessary to increase the attraction of the particles by cold or otherwise. So largely is
the bulk occupied by the particles increased by giving them this diminished attraction,
that if I were to take a portion of water a cubic inch in bulk (A), should produce a
volume of steam of that size, B [1,700 cubic inches; nearly a cubic foot], so greatly is
the attraction of cohesion diminished by heat; and yet it still remains water. You can
easily imagine the consequences which are due to this change in volume by heat - the
mighty powers of steam and the tremendous explosions which are sometimes produced by this
force of water. I want you now to see another experiment, which will perhaps give you a
better illustration of the bulk occupied by a body when in the state of vapor. Here is a
substance which we call iodine, and I am about to submit this solid body to the same kind
of condition as regards heat that I did the water and the ether [putting a few grains of
iodine into a hot glass globe, which immediately became filled with the violet vapor], and
you see the same kind of change produced. Moreover, it gives us the opportunity of
observing how beautiful is the violet - colored vapor from this black substance, or rather
the mixture of the vapor with air (for I would not wish you to understand that this globe
is entirely filled with the vapor of iodine).
If I had taken mercury and converted it into vapor (as I could easily do), I should
have a perfectly colorless vapor; for you must understand this about vapors, that bodies
in what we call the vaporous or the gaseous state are always perfectly transparent, never
cloudy or smoky; they are, however, often colored, and we can frequently have colored
vapors or gases produced by colorless particles themselves mixing together, as in this
case [the lecturer here inverted a glass cylinder full of binoxide of nitrogen16 over a cylinder of oxygen, when the dark red vapor of hyponitrous acid was produced]. Here
also you see a very excellent illustration of the effect of a power of nature which we
have not as yet come to, but which stands next on our list Chemical Affinity. And thus you
see we can have a violet vapor or an orange vapor, and different other kinds of vapor, but
they are always perfectly transparent, or else they would cease to be vapors.
[Footnote 16: Binoxide of nitrogen and hyponitrous acid. Binoxide of nitrogen is formed
when nitric acid and a little water are added to some copper turnings. It produces deep
red fumes as soon as it comes in contact with the air, by combining with the oxygen of the
latter to form hyponitrous acid. Binoxide of nitrogen is composed of two parts of oxygen
and one part of nitrogen; hyponitrous acid is composed of one part of nitrogen and three
parts of oxygen.]
I am now going to lead you a step beyond this consideration of the attraction of the
particles for each other. You see we have come to understand that, if we take water as an
illustration, whether it be ice, or water, or steam, it is always to be considered by us
as water. Well, now prepare your minds to go a little deeper into the subject. We have
means of searching into the constitution of water beyond any that are afforded us by the
action of heat, and among these one of the most important is that force which we call
voltaic electricity, which we used at our last meeting for the purpose of obtaining light,
and which we carried about the room by means of these wires. This force is produced by the
battery behind me, to which, however, I will not now refer more particularly; before we
have done we shall know more about this battery, but it must grow up in our knowledge as
we proceed. Now here is a portion of water in this little vessel, C, and besides the water
there are two plates of the metal platinum, which are connected with the wires (A and B)
coming outside, and I want to examine that water, and the state and the condition in which
its particles are arranged. If I were to apply heat to it you know what we should get; it
would assume the state of vapor, but it would nevertheless remain water, and would return
to the liquid state as soon as the heat was removed. Now by means of these wires (which
are connected with the battery behind me, and come under the floor and up through the
table) we shall have a certain amount of this new power at our disposal. Here you see it
is [causing the ends of the wires to touch] - that is the electric light we used
yesterday, and by means of these wires we can cause water to submit itself to this power;
for the moment I put them into metallic connection (at A and B), you see the water boiling
in that little vessel (C), and you hear the bubbling of the gas that is going through the
tube (D). See how I am converting the water into vapor; and if I take a little vessel (E),
and fill it with water, and put it into the trough over the end of the tube (D), there
goes the vapor ascending into the vessel. And yet that is not steam, for you know that if
steam is brought near cold water, it would at once condense, and return back again to
water; this, then, can not be steam, for it is bubbling through the cold water in this
trough; but it is a vaporous substance, and we must therefore examine it carefully, to see
in what way the water has been changed. And now, in order to give you a proof that it is
not steam, I am going to show you that it is combustible; for if I take this small vessel
to a light, the vapor inside explodes in a manner that steam could never do.
I will now fill this large bell-jar (F) with water; and I propose letting the gas
ascend into it, and I will then show you that we can reproduce the water back again from
the vapor or air that is there. Here is a strong glass vessel (G), and into it we will let
the gas (from F) pass. We will there fire it by the electric spark, and then, after the
explosion, you will find that we have got the water back again; it will not be much,
however, for you will recollect that I showed you how small a portion of water produced a
very large volume of vapor. Mr. Anderson will now pump all the air out of this vessel (G),
and when I have screwed it on to the top of our jar of gas (F), you will see, upon opening
the stop-cocks (H H H), the water will jump up, showing that some of the gas has passed
into the glass vessel. I will now shut these stop-cocks, and we shall be able to send the
electric spark through the gas by means of the wires (I, K) in the upper part of the
vessel, and you will see it burn with a most intense flash. [Mr. Anderson here brought a
Leyden jar, which he discharged through the confined gas by means of the wires I, K.] You
saw the flash, and now that you may see that there is no longer any gas remaining, if I
place it over the jar and open the stop-cocks again, up will go the gas, and we can have a
second combustion; and so I might go on again and again, and I should continue to
accumulate more and more of the water to which the gas has returned. Now is not this
curious? In this vessel (C) we can go on making from water a large bulk of permanent gas,
as we call it, and then we can reconvert it into water in this way. [Mr. Anderson brought
in another Leyden jar, which, however, from some cause, would not ignite the gas. It was
therefore recharged, when the explosion took place in the desired manner.] How beautifully
we get our results when we are right in our proceedings! It is not that Nature is wrong
when we make a mistake. Now I will lay this vessel (G) down by my right hand, and you can
examine it by-and-by; there is not very much water flowing down, but there is quite
sufficient for you to see.
Another wonderful thing about this mode of changing the condition of the water is this:
that we are able to get the separate parts of which it is composed at a distance the one
from the other, and to examine them, and see what they are like, and how many of them
there are; and for this purpose I have here some more water in a slightly different
apparatus to the former one, and if I place this in connection with the wires of the
battery (at A, B), I shall get a similar decomposition of the water at the two platinum
plates. Now I will put this little tube (O) over there, and that will collect the gas
together that comes from this side (A), and this tube (H) will collect the gas that comes
from the other side (B), and I think we shall soon be able to see a difference. In this
apparatus the wires are a good way apart from each other, and it now seems that each of
them is capable of drawing off particles from the water and sending them off, and you see
that one set of particles (H) is coming off twice as fast as those collected in the other
tube (O). Something is coming out of the water there (at H) which burns [setting fire to
the gas]; but what comes out of the water here (at O), although it will not burn, will
support combustion very vigorously. [The lecturer here placed a match with a glowing tip
in the gas, when it immediately rekindled.]
Here, then, we have two things, neither of them being water alone, but which we get out
of the water. Water is therefore composed of two substances different to itself, which
appear at separate places when it is made to submit to the force which I have in these
wires; and if take an inverted tube of water and collect this gas (H), you will see that
it is by no means the same as the one we collected in the former apparatus. That exploded
with a loud noise when it was lighted, but this will burn quite noiselessly: it is called
hydrogen; and the other we call oxygen - that gas which so beautifully brightness up all
combustion, but does not burn of itself. So now we see that water consists of two kinds of
particles attracting each other in a very different manner to the attraction of
gravitation or cohesion, and this new attraction we call chemical affinity, or the force
of chemical action between different bodies; we are now no longer concerned with the
attraction of iron for iron, water for water, wood for wood, or like bodies for each
other, as we were when dealing with the force of cohesion; we are dealing with another
kind of attraction - the attraction between particles of a different nature one to the
other. Chemical affinity depends entirely upon the energy with which particles of
different kinds attract each other. Oxygen and hydrogen are particles of different kinds,
and it is their attraction to each other which makes them chemically combine and produce
water.
I must now show you a little more at large what chemical affinity is. I can prepare
these gases from other substances as well as from water; and we will now prepare some
oxygen: here is another substance which contains oxygen - chlorate of potash; I will put
some of it into this glass retort, and Mr. Anderson will apply heat to it: we have here
different jars filled with water, and when, by the application of heat, the chlorate of
potash is decomposed, we will displace the water, and fill the jars with gas.
Now, when water is opened out in this way by means of the battery, which adds nothing
to it materially, which takes nothing from it materially (I mean no matter; I am not
speaking of force), which adds no matter to the water, it is changed in this way - the gas
which you saw burning a little while ago, called hydrogen, is evolved in large quantity,
and the other gas, oxygen, is evolved in only half the quantity; so that these two areas
represent water, and these are always the proportions between the two gases.
Oxygen . . . . . 88.9 Hydrogen . . . . 11.1
Water . . . . . 100.0
But oxygen is sixteen times the weight of the other - eight times as
heavy as the particles of hydrogen in the water; and you therefore know that water is
composed of nine parts by weight - one of hydrogen and eight of oxygen; thus:
Hydrogen ........... 46.2 cubic inches .................... = 1 grain
Oxygen ............. 23.1 cubic inches..................... = 8 grains
Water (steam)...... 69.3 cubic inche...................... = 9 grains
Now Mr. Anderson has prepared some oxygen, and we will proceed to examine what is the
character of this gas. First of all, you remember I told you that it does not burn, but
that it affects the burning of other bodies. I will just set fire to the point of this
little bit of wood, and then plunge it into the jar of oxygen, and you will see what this
gas does in increasing the brilliancy of the combustion. It does not burn, it does not
take fire as the hydrogen would; but how vividly the combustion of the match goes on!
Again, if I were to take this wax taper and light it, and turn it upside down in the air,
it would, in all probability, put itself out, owing to the wax running down into the wick.
[The lecturer here turned the lighted taper upside down, when in a few seconds it went
out.] Now that will not happen in oxygen gas; you will see how differently it acts. [The
taper was again lighted, turned upside down, and then introduced into a jar of oxygen.]
Look at that! See how the very wax itself burns, and falls down in a dazzling stream of
fire, so powerfully does the oxygen support combustiot. Again, here is another experiment
which will serve to illustrate the force, if I may so call it, of oxygen. I have here a
circular flame of spirit of wine, and with it I am about to show you the way in which iron
burns, because it will serve very well as a comparison between the effect produced by air
and oxygen. If I take this ring flame, I can shake, by means of a sieve, the fine
particles of iron filings through it, and you will see the way in which they burn. [The
lecturer here shook through the flame some iron filings, which took fire and fell through
with beautiful scintillations.] But if I now hold the flame over a jar of oxygen [the
experiment was repeated over a jar of oxygen, when the combustion of the filings as they
fell into the oxygen became almost insupportably brilliant], you see how wonderfully
different the effect is in the jar, because there we have oxygen instead of common air.
Lecture IV: Chemical Affinity - Heat
We shall have to pay a little more attention to the forces existing in water before we
can have a clear idea on the subject. Besides the attraction which there is between its
particles to make it hold together as a liquid or a solid, there is also another force,
different from the former - one which, yesterday, by means of the voltaic battery, we
overcame, drawing from the water two different substances, which, when heated by means of
the electric spark, attracted each other, and rushed into combination to reproduce water.
Now I propose to-day to continue this subject, and trace the various phenomena of chemical
affinity; and for this purpose, as we yesterday considered the character of oxygen, of
which I have here two jars (oxygen being those particles derived from the water which
enable other bodies to burn), we will now consider the other constituent of water, and,
without embarrassing you too much with the way in which these things are made, I will
proceed now to show you our common way of making hydrogen. (I called it hydrogen
yesterday: it is so called because it helps to generate water.)17 I put into
this retort some zinc, water, and oil of vitriol, and immediately an action takes place,
which produces an abundant evolution of gas, now coming over into this jar, and bubbling
up in appearance exactly like the oxygen we obtained yesterday.
[Footnote 17: 'Ydwp, "water," and yevvaw, "I generate."]
The processes, you see, are very different, though the result is the same, in so far as
it gives us certain gaseous particles. Here, then, is the hydrogen. I showed you yesterday
certain qualities of this gas; now let me exhibit you some other properties. Unlike
oxygen, which is a supporter of combustion and will not burn, hydrogen itself is
combustible. There is a jar full of it; and if I carry it along in this manner and put a
light to it, I think you will see it take fire - not with a bright light; you will, at all
events, hear it if you do not see it. Now that is a body entirely different from oxygen;
it is extremely light; for, although yesterday you saw twice as much of this hydrogen
produced on the one side as on the other by the voltaic battery, it was only one-eighth
the weight of the oxygen. I carry this jar upside down. Why? Because I know that it is a
very light body, and that it will continue in this jar upside down quite as effectually as
the water will in that jar which is not upside down; and just as I can pour water from one
vessel into another in the right position to receive it, so can I pour this gas from one
jar into another when they are upside down. See what I am about to do. There is no
hydrogen in this jar at present, but I will gently turn this jar of hydrogen up under this
other jar, and then we will examine the two. We shall see, on applying a light, that the
hydrogen has left the jar in which it was at first, and has poured upward into the other,
and there we shall find it.
You now understand that we can have particles of very different k_nds, and that they
can have different bulks and weights; and there are two or three very interesting
experiments which serve to illustrate this. For instance, if I blow soap bubbles with the
breath from my mouth, you will see them fall, because I fill them with common air, and the
water which forms the bubble carries it down. But now, if I inhale hydrogen gas into my
lungs (it does no harm to the lungs, although it does no good to them), see what happens.
[The lecturer inhaled some hydrogen, and, after one or two ineffectual attempts, succeeded
in blowing a splendid bubble, which rose majestically and slowly to the ceiling of the
theatre, where it burst.] That shows you very well how light a substance this is; for,
notwithstanding all the heavy bad air from my lungs, and the weight of the bubble, you saw
how it was carried up. I want you now to consider this phenomenon of weight as indicating
how exceedingly different particles are one from the other; and I will take as
illustrations these very common things, air, water, the heaviest body, platinum, and this
gas, and observe how they differ in this respect; for if I take a piece of platinum of
that size, it is equal to the weight of portions of water, air, and hydrogen of the bulks
I have represented in these spheres; and this illustration gives you a very good idea of
the extraordinary difference with regard to the gravity of the articles having this
enormous difference in bulk. [The following tabular statement having reference to this
illustration appeared on the diagram board.]
________________________________________________________________ | | | |
|Hydrogen......................1 | | |
|__________________________________|______________|____________| | | | |
|Air..........................14.4 | 1 | |
|__________________________________|______________|____________| | | | |
|Water.....................11943 | 829 | 1 |
|__________________________________|______________|____________| | | | |
|Platinum.................256774 | 17831 | 21.5 |
________________________________________________________________
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 show it better. Mr. Anderson will put a candle under that jar, and you will
see how soon the water is produced. 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.
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
the think about. Here is some chlorate of potash, and there some sulphuret of antimony18.
We will mix these two different sets of particles together and I want to show 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 that 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 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 sugar19, 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 traveling about the mass, and setting it on fire, and throwing it into such
wonderful agitation!
[Footnote 18: Chlorate of potash and sulphuret of antimony. Great care must be taken in
mixing these substances, as the mixture is dangerously explosive. They must be powdered
separately and mixed together with a feather on a sheet of paper, or by passing them,
several times through a small sieve.]
[Footnote 19: The mixture of chlorate of potash and sugar does not require the same
precautions. They may be rubbed together in a pestle and mortar without fear. One part of
chlorate of potash and three parts of sugar will answer. The mixture need only be touched
with a glass rod dipped in oil of vitriol.]
I must now come to a few circumstances which require careful consideration. We have
already examined one of the effects of this chemical affinity, but, to make the matter
more clear, we must point out some others. And here are two salts dissolved in water20.
They are both colorless solutions, and in these glasses you can not see any difference
between them. But if I mix them, I shall have chemical attraction take place. I will pour
the two together into this glass, and you will at once see, I have no doubt, a certain
amount of change. Look, they are already becoming milky, but they are sluggish in their
action - not quick as the others were - for we have endless varieties of rapidity in
chemical action. Now, if I mix them together, and stir them so as to bring them properly
together, you will soon see what a different result is produced. As I mix them they get
thicker and thicker, and you see the liquid is hardening and stiffening, and before long I
shall have it quite hard; and before the end of the lecture it will be a solid stone - a
wet stone, no doubt, but more or less solid - in consequence of the chemical affinity. Is
not this changing two liquids into a solid body a wonderful manifestation of chemical
affinity?
[Footnote 20: Two salts dissolved in water. Sulphate of soda and chloride of calcium.
The solutions must be saturated for the experiment to succeed well.]
There is another remarkable circumstance in chemical affinity, which is, that it is
capable of either waiting or acting at once. And this is very singular, because we know of
nothing of the kind in the forces either of gravitation or cohesion. For instance: here
are some oxygen particles, and here is a lump of carbon particles. I am going to put the
carbon particles into the oxygen; they can act, but they do not - they are just like this
unlighted candle. It stands here quietly on the table, waiting until we want to light it.
But it is not so in this other case: here is a substance, gaseous like the oxygen, and if
I put these particles of metal into it the two combine at once. The copper and the
chlorine unite by their power of chemical affinity, and produce a body entirely unlike
either of the substances used. And in this other case, it is not that there is any
deficiency of affinity between the carbon and oxygen, for the moment I choose to put them
in a condition to exert their affinity, you will see the difference. [The piece of
charcoal was ignited, and introduced into the jar of oxygen, when the combustion proceeded
with vivid scintillations.]
Now this chemical action is set going exactly as it would be it I had lighted the
candle, or as it is when the servant puts coals on and lights the fire: the substances
wait until we do something which is able to start the action. Can any thing be more
beautiful than this combustion of charcoal in oxygen? You must understand that each of
these little sparks is a portion of the charcoal, or the bark of the charcoal thrown off
white hot into the oxygen, and burning in it most brilliantly, as you see. And now let me
tell you another thing, or you will go away with a very imperfect notion of the powers and
effects of this affinity. There you see some charcoal burning in oxygen. Well, a piece of
lead will burn in oxygen just as well as the charcoal does, or indeed better, for
absolutely that piece of lead will act at once upon the oxygen as the copper did in the
other vessel with regard to the chlorine. And here, also, a piece of iron - if I light it
and put it into the oxygen, it will burn away just as the carbon did. And I will take some
lead, and show you that it will burn in the common atmospheric oxygen at the ordinary
temperature. These are the lumps of lead which you remember we had the other day - the two
pieces which clung together. Now these pieces, if I take them to-day and press them
together, will not stick, and the reason is that they have attracted from the atmosphere a
part of the oxygen there present, and have become coated as with a varnish by the oxide of
lead, which is formed on the surface by a real process of combustion or combination. There
you see the iron burning very well in oxygen, and I will tell you the reason why those
scissors and that lead do not take fire while they are lying on the table. Here the lead
is in a lump, and the coating of oxide remains on its surface, while there you see the
melted oxide is clearing itself off from the iron, and allowing more and more to go on
burning. In this case, however, [holding up a small glass tube containing lead pyrophorus21],
the lead has been very carefully produced in fine powder, and put into a glass tube, and
hermetically sealed so as to preserve it, and I expect you will see it take fire at once.
This has been made about a month ago, and has thus had time to sink down to its normal
temperature; what you see, therefore, is the result of chemical affinity alone. [The tube
was broken at the end, and the lead poured out on to a piece of paper, whereupon it
immediately took fire.] Look! look at the lead burning! Why, it has set fire to the paper!
Now that is nothing more than the common affinity always existing between very clean lead
and the atmospheric oxygen; and the reason why this iron does not burn until it is made
red hot is because it has got a coating of oxide about it, which stops the action of the
oxygen - putting a varnish, as it were, upon its surface, as we varnish a picture -
absolutely forming a substance which prevents the natural chemical affinity between the
bodies from acting.
[Footnote 21: Lead pyrophorus. This is tartrate of lead which has been heated in a
glass tube to dull redness as long as vapors are emitted. As soon as they cease to be
evolved the end of the tube is sealed, and it is allowed to cool.]
I must now take you a little father in this kind of illustration, or consideration I
would rather call it, of chemical affinity. This attraction between different particles
exists also most curiously in cases where they are previously combined with other
substances. Here is a little chlorate of potash containing the oxygen which we found
yesterday could be procured from it; it contains the oxygen there combined and held down
by its chemical affinity with other things, but still it can combine with sugar, as you
saw. This affinity can thus act across substances, and I want you to see how curiously
what we call combustion acts with respect to this force of chemical affinity. If I take a
piece of phosphorus and set fire to it, and then place a jar of air over the phosphorus,
you see the combustion which we are having there on account of chemical affinity
(combustion being in all cases the result of chemical affinity). The phosphorus is
escaping in that vapor, which will condense into a snowlike mass at the close of the
lecture. But suppose I limit the atmosphere, what then? why, even the phosphorus will go
out. Here is a piece of camphor, which will burn very well in the atmosphere, and even on
water it will float about and burn, by reason of some of its particles gaining access to
the air. But if I limit the quantity of air by placing a jar over it, as I am now doing,
you will soon find the camphor will go out. Well, why does it go out? not for want of air,
for there is plenty of air remaining in the jar. Perhaps you will be shrewd enough to say
for want of oxygen.
This, therefore, leads us to the inquiry as to whether oxygen can do more than a
certain amount of work. The oxygen there can not go on burning an unlimited quantity of
candle, for that has gone out, as you see; and its amount of chemical attraction or
affinity is just as strikingly limited: it can no more be fallen short of or exceeded than
can the attraction of gravitation. You might as soon attempt to destroy gravitation, or
weight, or all things that exist, as to destroy the exact amount of force exerted by this
oxygen. And when I pointed out to you that eight by weight of oxygen to one by weight of
hydrogen went to form water, I meant this, that neither of them would combine in different
proportions with the other, for you can not get ten of hydrogen to combine with six of
oxygen, or ten of oxygen to combine with six of hydrogen; it must be eight of oxygen and
one of hydrogen. Now suppose I limit the action in this way: this piece of cotton wool
burns, as you see, very well in the atmosphere; and I have known of cases of cotton-mills
being fired as if with gunpowder through the very finely divided particles of cotton being
diffused through the atmosphere in the mill, when it has sometimes happened that a flame
has caught these raised particles, and it has run from one end of the mill to the other
and blown it up. That, then, is on account of the affinity which the cotton has for the
oxygen; but suppose I set fire to this piece of cotton which is rolled up tightly; it does
not go on burning, because I have limited the supply of oxygen, and the inside is
prevented from having access to the oxygen, just as it was in the case of the lead by the
oxide. But here is some cotton which has been imbued with oxygen in a certain manner. I
need not trouble you now with the way it is prepared; it is called guncotton22.
See how that burns [setting fire to a piece]; it is very different from the other, because
the oxygen which must be present in its proper amount is put there beforehand. And I have
here some pieces of paper which are prepared like the guncotton23, and imbued
with bodies containing oxygen. Here is some which has been soaked in nitrate of strontia:
you will see the beautiful red color of its flame; and here is another which I think
contains baryta, which gives that fine green light; and I have here some more which has
been soaked in nitrate of copper: it does not burn quite so brightly, but still very
beautifully. In all these cases the combustion goes on independent of the oxygen of the
atmosphere. And here we have some gunpowder put into a case, in order to show that it is
capable of burning under water. You know that we put it into a gun, shutting off the
atmosphere with shot, and yet the oxygen which it contains supplies the particles with
that without which chemical action could not proceed. Now I have a vessel of water here,
and am going to make the experiment of putting this fuse under the water, and you will see
whether that water can extinguish it; here it is burning out of the water, and there it is
burning under the water; and so it will continue until exhausted, and all by reason of the
requisite amount of oxygen being contained within the substance. It is by this kind of
attraction of the different particles one to the other that we are enabled to trace the
laws of chemical affinity, and the wonderful variety of the exertions of these laws.
[Footnote 22: Guncotton is made by immersing cotton wool in a mixture of sulphuric acid
and the strongest nitric acid or of sulphuric acid and nitrate of potash.]
[Footnote 23: Paper prepared like guncotton. It should be bibulous paper, and must be
soaked for ten minutes in a mixture of ten parts, by measure, of oil of vitriol with five
parts of strong fuming nitric acid. The paper must afterward be thoroughly washed with
warm distilled water, and then carefully dried at a gentle heat. The paper is then
saturated with chlorate of strontia, or chlorate of baryta, or nitrate of copper, by
immersion in a warm solution of these salts (See Chemical News, vol. i., p. 36.)]
Now I want you to observe that one great exertion of this power which is known as
chemical affinity is to produce Heat and light; you know, as a matter of fact, no doubt,
that when bodies burn they give out heat, but it is a curious thing that this heat does
not continue; the heat goes away as soon as the action stops, and you see, thereby, that
it depends upon the action during the time it is going on. It is not so with gravitation;
this force is continuous, and is just as effective in making that lead press on the table
as it was when it first fell there. Nothing occurs there which disappears when the action
of falling is over; the pressure is upon the table, and will remain there until the lead
is removed; whereas, in the action of chemical affinity to give light and heat, they go
away immediately the action is over. This lamp seems to evolve heat and light
continuously, but it is owing to a constant stream of air coming into it on all sides, and
this work of producing light and heat by chemical affinity will subside as soon as the
stream of air is interrupted. What, then, is this curious condition of heat? Why, it is
the evolution of another power of matter - of a power new to us, and which we must
consider as if it were now for the very first time brought under our notice. What is heat?
We recognize heat by its power of liquefying solid bodies and vaporizing liquid bodies; by
its power of setting in action, and very often overcoming, chemical affinity. Then how do
we obtain heat? We obtain it in various ways; most abundantly by means of the chemical
affinity we have just before been speaking about, but we can also obtain it in many other
ways. Friction will produce heat. The Indians rub pieces of wood together until they make
them hot enough to take fire; and such things have been known as two branches of a tree
rubbing together so hard as to set the tree on fire. I do not suppose I shall set these
two pieces of wood on fire by friction, but I can readily produce heat enough to ignite
some phosphorus. [The lecturer here rubbed two pieces of cedar wood strongly against each
other for a minute, and then placed on them a piece of phosphorus, which immediately took
fire.] And if you take a smooth metal button stuck on a cork, and rub it on a piece of
soft deal wood, you will make it so hot as to scorch wood and paper, and burn a match.
I am now going to show you that we can obtain heat, not by chemical affinity alone, but
by the pressure of air. Suppose I take a pellet of cotton and moisten it with a little
ether, and put it into a glass tube, and then take a piston and press it down suddenly, I
expect I shall be able to burn a little of that ether in the vessel. It wants a suddenness
of pressure, or we shall not do what we require. [The piston was forcibly pressed down,
when a flame, due to the combustion of the ether, was visible in the lower part of the
syringe.] All we want is to get a little ether in vapor, and give fresh air each time, and
so we may go on again and again, getting heat enough by the compression of air to fire the
ether-vapor.
This, then, I think, will be sufficient, accompanied with all you have previously seen,
to show you how we procure heat. And now for the effects of this power. We need not
consider many of them on the present occasion, because when you have seen its power of
changing ice into water and water into steam, you have seen the two principal results of
the application of heat. I want you now to see how it expands all bodies - all bodies but
one, and that under limited circumstances. Mr. Anderson will hold a lamp under that
retort, and you will see, the moment he does so, that the air will issue abundantly from
the neck which is under water, because the heat which he applies to the air causes it to
expand. And here is a brass rod which goes through that hole, and fits also accurately
into this gauge; but if I make it warm with this spirit lamp, it will only go in the gauge
or through the hole with difficulty; and if I were to put it into boiling water it would
not go through at all. Again, as soon as the heat escapes from bodies, they collapse: see
how the air is contracting in the vessel now that Mr. Anderson has taken away his lamp;
the stem of it is filling with water. Notice too, now, that although I cannot get the tube
through this hole or into the gauge, the moment I cool it, by dipping it into water, it
goes through with perfect facility, so that we have a perfect proof of this power of heat
to contract and expand bodies.
Lecture V: Magnetism - Electricity
I wonder whether we shall be too deep to-day or not. Remember that we spoke of the
attraction by gravitation of all bodies to all bodies by their simple approach. Remember
that we spoke of the attraction of particles of the same kind to each other - that power
which keeps them together in masses iron attracted to iron, brass to brass, or water to
water. Remember that we found, on looking into water, that there were particles of two
different kinds attracted to each other; and this was a great step beyond the first simple
attraction of gravitation, because here we deal with attraction between different kinds of
matter. The hydrogen could attract the oxygen and reduce it to water, but it could not
attract any of its own particles, so that there we obtained a first indication of the
existence of two attractions.
To-day we come to a kind of attraction even more curious than the last, namely, the
attraction which we find to be of a double nature - of a curious and dual nature. And I
want, first of all, to make the nature of this doubleness clear to you. Bodies are
sometimes endowed with a wonderful attraction, which is not found in them in their
ordinary state. For instance, here is a piece of shellac, having the attraction of
gravitation, having the attraction of cohesion, and if I set fire to it, it would have the
attraction of chemical affinity to the oxygen in the atmosphere. Now all these powers we
find in it as if they were parts of its substance; but there is another property which I
will try and make evident by means of this ball, this bubble of air [a light India-rubber
ball, inflated and suspended by a thread]. There is no attraction between this ball and
this shellac at present; there may be a little wind in the rooms slightly moving the ball
about, but there is no attraction. But if I rub the shellac with a piece of flannel
[rubbing the shellac, and then holding it near the ball], look at the attraction which has
arisen out of the shellac simply by this friction, and which I may take away as easily by
drawing it gently through my hand. [The lecturer repeated the experiment of exciting the
shellac, and then removing the attractive power by drawing it through his hand.] Again,
you will see I can repeat this experiment with another substance; for if I take a glass
rod, and rub it with a piece of silk covered with what we call amalgam, look at the
attraction which it has; how it draws the ball toward it; and then, as before, by quietly
rubbing it through the hand, the attraction will be all removed again, to come back by
friction with this silk.
But now we come to another fact. I will take this piece of shellac, and make it
attraction by friction; and remember that, whenever we get an attraction of gravity,
chemical affinity, adhesion, or electricity (as in this case), the body which attracts is
attracted also, and just as much as that ball was attracted by the shellac, the shellac
was attracted by the ball. Now I will suspend this piece of excited shellac in a little
paper stirrup, in this way, in order to make it move easily, and I will take another piece
of shellac, and, after rubbing it with flannel, will bring them near together: you will
think that they ought to attract each other; but now what happens? It does not attract; on
the contrary, it very strongly repels, and I can thus drive it round to any extent. These,
therefore, repel each other, although they are so strongly attractive - repel each other
to the extent of driving this heavy piece of shellac round and round in this way. But if I
excite this piece of shellac as before, and take this piece of glass and rub it with silk,
and then bring them near, what think you will happen? [The lecturer held the excited glass
near the excited shellac, when they attracted each other strongly.] You see, therefore,
what a difference there is between these two attractions; they are actually two kinds of
attraction concerned in this case, quite different to any thing we have met with before,
but the force is the same. We have here, then, a double attraction - a dual attraction or
force one attracting and the other repelling.
Again, to show you another experiment which will help to make this clear to you:
Suppose I set up this rough indicator again [the excited shellac suspended in the
stirrup]: it is rough, but delicate enough for my purpose; and suppose I take this other
piece of shellac, and take away the power, which I can do by drawing it gently through the
hand; and suppose I take a piece of flannel, which I have shaped into a cap for it and
made dry. I will put this shellac into the flannel, and here comes out a very beautiful
result. I will rub this shellac and the flannel together (which I can do by twisting the
shellac round), and leave them in contact; and then if I ask, by bringing them near our
indicator, what is the attractive force? it is nothing; but if I take them apart, and then
ask what will they do when they are separated? why, the shellac is strongly repelled, as
it was before, but the cap is strongly attractive; and yet, if I bring them both together
again, there is no attraction; it has all disappeared [the experiment was repeated]. Those
two bodies, therefore, still contain this attractive power; when they were parted, it was
evident to your senses that they had it, though they do not attract when they are
together.
This, then, is sufficient, in the outset, to give you an idea of the nature of the
force which we call Electricity. There is no end to the things from which you can evolve
this power. When you go home, take a stick of sealing-wax - I have rather a large stick,
but a smaller one will do - and make an indicator of this sort. Take a watch-glass (or
your watch itself will do; you only want something which shall have a round face); and
now, if you place a piece of flat glass upon that, you have a very easily moved centre;
and if I take this lath and put it on the flat glass (you see I am searching for the
centre of gravity of this lath; I want to balance it upon the watch-glass), it is very
easily moved round; and if I take this piece of sealing-wax and rub it against my coat,
and then try whether it is attractive [holding it near the lath], you see how strong the
attraction is; I can even draw it about. Here, then, you have a very beautiful indicator,
for I have, with a small piece of sealing-wax and my coat, pulled round a plank of that
kind, so you need be in no want of indicators to discover the presence of this attraction.
There is scarcely a substance which we may not use. Here are some indicators. I bend round
a strip of paper into a hoop, and we have as good an indicator as can be required. See how
it rolls along, traveling after the sealing-wax! If I make them smaller, of course we have
them running faster, and sometimes they are actually attracted up into the air. Here,
also, is a little collodion balloon. It is so electrical that it will scarcely leave my
hand unless to go to the other. See how curiously electrical it is; it is hardly possible
for me to touch it without making it electrical; and here is a piece which clings to any
thing it is brought near, and which it is not easy to lay down. And here is another
substance, gutta-percha, in thin strips: it is astonishing how, by rubbing this in your
hands, you make it electrical; but our time forbids us to go farther into this subject at
present; you see clearly there are two kinds of electricities which may be obtained by
rubbing shellac with flannel or glass with silk.
Now there are some curious bodies in nature (of which I have two specimens on the
table) which are called magnets or loadstones; ores of iron, of which there is a great
deal sent from Sweden. They have the attraction of gravitation, and attraction of
cohesion, and certain chemical attraction; but they also have a great attractive power,
for this little key is held up by this stone. Now that is not chemical attraction; it is
not the attraction of chemical affinity, or of aggregation of particles, or of cohesion,
or of electricity (for it will not attract this ball if I bring it near it), but it is a
separate and dual attraction, and, what is more, one which is not readily removed from the
substance, for it has existed in it for ages and ages in the bowels of the earth. Now we
can make artificial magnets (you will see me tomorrow make artificial magnets of
extraordinary power). And let us take one of these artificial magnets and examine it, and
see where the power is in the mass, and whether it is a dual power. You see it attracts
these keys, two or three in succession, and it will attract a very large piece of iron.
That, then, is a very different thing indeed to what you saw in the case of the shellac,
for that only attracted a light ball, but here I have several ounces of iron held up. And
if we come to examine this attraction a little more closely, we shall find it presents
some other remarkable differences; first of all, one end of this bar attracts this key,
but the middle does not attract. It is not, then, the whole of the substance which
attracts. If I lace this little key in the middle it does not adhere; but if I place it
there, a little nearer the end, it does, though feebly. Is it not, then, very curious to
find that there is an attractive power at the extremities which is not in the middle - to
have thus in one bar two places in which this force of attraction resides? If I take this
bar and balance it carefully on a point, so that it will be free to move round, I can try
what action this piece of iron has on it. Well, it attracts one end, and it also attracts
the other end, just as you saw the shellac and the glass did, with the exception of its
not attracting in the middle. But if now, instead of a piece of iron, I take a magnet, and
examine it in a similar way, you see that one of its ends repels the suspended magnet; the
force, then, is no longer attraction, but repulsion; but, if I take the other end of the
magnet and bring it near, it shows attraction again.
You will see this better, perhaps, by another kind of experiment. Here is a little
magnet, and I have colored the ends differently, so that you may distinguish one form the
other. Now this end (S) of the magnet attracts the uncolored end of the little magnet. You
see it pulls toward it with great power; and, as I carry it round, the uncolored end still
follows. But now, if I gradually bring the middle of the bar magnet opposite the uncolored
end of the needle, it has no effect upon it, either of attraction or repulsion, until, as
I come to the opposite extremity (N), you see that it is the colored end of the needle
which is pulled toward it. We are now, therefore, dealing with two kinds of power,
attracting different ends of the magnet - a double power, already existing in these
bodies, which takes up the form of attraction and repulsion. And now, when I put up this
label with the word Magnetism, you will understand that it is to express this double
power.
Now with this loadstone you may make magnets artificially. Here is an artificial magnet
in which both ends have been brought together in order to increase the attraction. This
mass will lift that lump of iron, and, what is more, by placing this keeper, as it is
called, on the top of the magnet, and taking hold of the handle, it will adhere
sufficiently strongly to allow itself to be lifted up, so wonderful is its power of
attraction. If you take a needle, and just draw one of its ends along one extremity of the
magnet, and then draw the other end along the other extremity, and then gently place it on
the surface of some water (the needle will generally float on the surface, owing to the
slight greasiness communicated to it by the fingers), you will be able to get all the
phenomena of attraction and repulsion by bringing another magnetized needle near to it.
I want you now to observe that, although I have shown you in these magnets that this
double power becomes evident principally at the extremities, yet the whole of the magnet
is concerned in giving the power. That will at first seem rather strange; and I must
therefore show you an experiment to prove that this is not an accidental matter, but that
the whole of the mass is really concerned in this force, just as in falling the whole of
the mass is really acted upon by the force of gravitation. I have here a steel bar, and I
am going to make it a magnet by rubbing it on the large magnet. I have now made the two
ends magnetic in opposite ways. I do not at present know one from the other, but we can
soon find out. You see, when I bring it near our magnetic needle, one end repels and the
other attracts; and the middle will neither attract nor repel - it can not, because it is
half way between the two ends. But now, if I break out that piece (n, s), and then examine
it, see how strongly one end (n) pulls at this end (S), and how it repels the other end
(N). And so it can be shown that every part of the magnet contains this power of
attraction and repulsion, but that the power is only rendered evident at the end of the
mass. You will understand all this in a little while; but what you have now to consider is
that every part of this steel is in itself a magnet. Here is a little fragment which I
have broken out of the very centre of the bar, and you will still see that one end is
attractive and the other is repulsive. Now is not this power a most wonderful thing? And
very strange, the means of taking it from one substance and bringing it to other matters.
I can not make a piece of iron or any thing else heavier or lighter than it is; its
cohesive power it must and does have; but, as you have seen by these experiments, we can
add or subtract this power of magnetism, and almost do as we like with it.
And now we will return for a short time to the subject treated of at the commencement
of this lecture. You see here a large machine arranged for the purpose of rubbing glass
with silk, and for obtaining the power called electricity; and the moment the handle of
the machine is turned a certain amount of electricity is evolved, as you will see by the
rise of the little straw indicator (at A). Now I know, from the appearance of repulsion of
the pith ball at the end of the straw, that electricity is present in those brass
conductors (BB), and I want you to see the manner in which that electricity can pass away
[touching the conductor (B) with his finger, the lecturer drew a spark from it, and the
straw electrometer immediately fell]. There, it has all gone; and that I have really taken
it away you shall see by an experiment of this sort. If I hold this cylinder of brass by
the glass handle, and touch the conductor with it, I take away a little of the
electricity. You see the spark in which it passes, and observe that the pith-ball
indicator has fallen a little, which seems to imply that so much electricity is lost; but
it is not lost; it is here in this brass, and I can take it away and carry it about, not
because it has any substance of its own, but by some strange property which we have not
before met with as belonging to any other force. Let us see whether we have it here or
not. [The lecturer brought the charged cylinder to a jet from which gas was issuing; the
spark was seen to pass from the cylinder to the jet, but the gas did not light.] Ah! the
gas did not light, but you saw the spark; there is, perhaps, some draught in the room
which blew the gas on one side, or else it would light; we will try this experiment
afterward. You see from the spark that I can transfer the power from the machine to this
cylinder, and then carry it away and give it to some other body.
You know very well, as a matter of experiment, that we can transfer the power of heat
from one thing to another; for if I pout my hand near the fire it becomes hot. I can show
you this by placing before us this ball, which has just been brought red-hot from the
fire. If I press this wire to it some of the heat will be transferred from the ball, and I
have only now to touch this piece of gun-cotton with the hot wire, and you see how I can
transfer the heat from the ball to the wire, and from the wire to the cotton. So you see
that some powers are transferable, and others are not. Observe how long the heat stops in
this ball. I might touch it with the wire or with my finger, and if I did so quickly I
should merely burn the surface of the skin; whereas, if I touch that cylinder, however
rapidly, with my finger, the electricity is gone at once - dispersed on the instant, in a
manner wonderful to think of.
I must now take up a little of your time in showing you the manner in which these
powers are transferred from one thing to another; for the manner in which force may be
conducted or transmitted is extraordinary, and most essential for us to understand. Let us
see in what manner these powers travel from place to place. Both heat and electricity can
be conducted; and here is an arrangement I have made to show how the former can travel. It
consists of a bar of copper; and if I take a spirit lamp (this is one way of obtaining the
power of heat) and place it under that little chimney, the flame will strike against the
bar of copper and keep it hot. Now you are aware that power is being transferred from the
flame of that lamp to the copper, and you will see by-and-by that it is being conducted
along the copper from particle to particle; for inasmuch as I have fastened these wooden
balls by a little wax at particular distances from the point where the copper is first
heated, first one ball will fall and then the more distant ones, as the heat travels
along, and thus you will learn that the heat travels gradually through the copper. You
will see that this is a very slow conduction of power as compared with electricity. If I
take cylinders of wood and metal, joined together at the ends, and wrap a piece of paper
round, and then apply the heat of this lamp to the place where the metal and wood join,
you will see how the heat will accumulate where the wood is, and burn the paper with which
I have covered it; but where the metal is beneath, the heat is conducted away too fast for
the paper to be burned. And so, if I take a piece of wood and a piece of metal joined
together, and put it so that the flame shall play equally both upon one and the other, we
shall soon find that the metal will become hot before the wood; for if I put a piece of
phosphorus on the wood and another piece on the copper, you will find that the phosphorus
on the copper will take fire before that on the wood is melted; and this shows you how
badly the wood conducts heat. But with regard to the traveling of electricity from place
to place, its rapidity is astonishing. I will, first of all, take these pieces of glass
and metal, and you will soon understand how it is that the glass does not lose the power
which it acquired when it is rubbed by the silk; by one or two experiments I will show
you. If I take this piece of brass and bring it near the machine, you see how the
electricity leaves the latter and passes to the brass cylinder. And again: if I take a rod
of metal and touch the machine with it, I lower the indicator; but when I touch it with a
rod of glass, no power is drawn away, showing you that the electricity is conducted by the
glass and the metal in a manner entirely different; and, to make you see that more
clearly, we will take one of our Leyden jars. Now I must not embarrass your minds with
this subject too much, but if I take a piece of metal and bring it against the knob at the
top and the metallic coating at the bottom, you will see the electricity passing through
the air as a brilliant spark. It takes no sensible time to pass through this; and if I
were to take a long metallic wire, no matter what the length, at least as far as we are
concerned, and if I make one end of it touch the outside, and the other touch the knob at
the top, see how the electricity passes! It has flashed instantaneously through the whole
length of this wire. Is not this different from the transmission of heat through this
copper bar which has taken a quarter of an hour or more to reach the first ball?
Here is another experiment for the purpose of showing the conductibility of this power
through some bodies and not through others. Why do I have this arrangement made of brass?
[pointing to the brass work of the electrical machine]. Because it conducts electricity.
And why do I have these columns made of glass? Because they obstruct the passage of
electricity. And why do I put that paper tassel at the top of the pole, upon a glass rod,
and connect it with this machine by means of a wire? You see at once that as soon as the
handle of the machine is turned, the electricity which is evolved travels along this wire
and up the wooden rod, and goes to the tassel at the top, and you see the power of
repulsion with which it has endowed these strips of paper, each spreading outward to the
ceiling and sides of the room. The outside of that wire is covered with gutta-percha; it
would not serve to keep the force from you when touching it with your hands, because it
would burst through; but it answers our purpose for the present. And so you perceived how
easily I can manage to send this power of electricity from place to place by choosing the
materials which can conduct the power. Suppose I want to fire a portion of gunpowder, I
can readily do it by this transferable power of electricity. I will take a Leyden jar, or
any other arrangement which gives us this power, and arrange wires so that they may carry
the power to the place I wish; and then placing a little gunpowder on the extremities of
the wires, the moment I make the connection by this discharging rod I shall fire the
gunpowder [the connection was made and the gunpowder ignited]. And if I were to show you a
stool like this, and were to explain to you its construction, you could easily understand
that we use glass legs because these are capable of preventing the electricity from going
away to the earth. If, therefore, I were to stand on this stool, and receive the
electricity through this conductor, I could give it to anything that I touched. [The
lecturer stood upon the insulating stool, and placed himself in connection with the
conductor of the machine.] Now I am electrified; I can feel my hair rising up, as the
paper tassel did just now. Let us see whether I can succeed in lighting gas by touching
the jet with my finger. [The lecturer brought his finger near a jet from which gas was
issuing, when, after one or two attempts, the spark which came from his finger to the jet
set fire to the gas.] You now see how it is that this power of electricity can be
transferred from the matter in which it is generated, and conducted along wires and other
bodies, and thus be made to serve new purposes, utterly unattainable by the powers we have
spoken of on previous days; and you will not now be at a loss to bring this power of
electricity into comparison with those which to we have previously examined, and to-morrow
we shall be able to go farther into the consideration of these transferable powers.
Lecture VI: The Correlation Of The Physical Forces
We have frequently seen, during the course of these lectures, that one of those powers
or forces of matter, of which I have written the names on that board, has produced results
which are due to the action of some other force. Thus you have seen the force of
electricity acting in other ways than in attracting; you have also seen it combine matters
together or disunite them by means of its action on the chemical force; and in this case,
therefore, you have an instance in which these two powers are related. But we have other
and deeper relations than these; we have not merely to see how it is that one power
affects another - how the force of heat affects chemical affinity, and so forth, but we
must try and comprehend what relation they bear to each other, and how these powers may be
changed one into the other; and it will to - day require all my care, and your care too,
to make this clear to your minds. I shall be obliged to confine myself to one or two
instances, because to take in the whole extent of this mutual relation and conversion of
forces would surpass the human intellect.
In the first place, then, here is a piece of fine zinc foil, and if I cut it into
narrow strips and apply to it the power of heat, admitting the contact of air at the same
time, you will find that it burns; and then, seeing that it burns, you will be prepared to
say that there is chemical action taking place. You see all I have to do is to hold the
piece of zinc at the side of the flame, so as to let it get heated, and yet to allow the
air which is flowing into the flame from all sides to have access to it; there is the
piece of zinc burning just like a piece of wood, only brighter. A part of the zinc is
going up into the air in the form of that white smoke, and part is falling down on to the
table. This, then, is the action of chemical affinity exerted between the zinc and the
oxygen of the air. I will show you what a curious kind of affinity this is by an
experiment which is rather striking when seen for the first time. I have here some iron
filings and gunpowder, and will mix them carefully together, with as little rough handling
as possible; now we will compare the combustibility, so to speak, of the two. I will pour
some spirit of wine into a basin and set it on fire; and, having our flame, I will drop
this mixture of iron filings and gunpowder through it, so that both sets of particles will
have an equal chance of burning. And now tell me which of them it is that burns? You see a
plentiful combustion of the iron filings; but I want you to observe that, though they have
equal chances of burning, we shall find that by far the greater part of the gunpowder
remains untouched; I have only to drain off this spirit of wine, and let the powder which
has gone through the flame dry, which it will do in a few minutes, and I will then test it
with a lighted match. So ready is the iron to burn, that it takes, under certain
circumstances, even less time to catch fire than gunpowder. [As soon as the gunpowder was
dry, Mr. Anderson handed it to the lecturer, who applied a lighted match to it, when a
sudden flash showed how large a proportion of gunpowder had escaped combustion when
falling through the flame of alcohol.]
These are all cases of chemical affinity, and I show them to make you understand that
we are about to enter upon the consideration of a strange kind of chemical affinity, and
then to see how far we are enabled to convert this force of affinity into electricity or
magnetism, or any other of the forces which we have discussed. Here is some zinc (I keep
to the metal zinc, as it is very useful for our purpose), and I can produce hydrogen gas
by putting the zinc and sulphuric acid together, as they are in that retort; there you see
the mixture which gives us hydrogen - the zinc is pulling the water to pieces and setting
free hydrogen gas. Now we have learned by experience that if a little mercury is spread
over that zinc, it does not take away its power of decomposing the water, but modifies it
most curiously. See how that mixture is now boiling; but when I add a little mercury to it
the gas ceases to come off. We have now scarcely a bubble of hydrogen set free, so that
the action is suspended for the time. We have not destroyed the power of chemical
affinity, but modified it in a wonderful and beautiful manner. Here are some pieces of
zinc covered with mercury exactly in the same way as the zinc in that retort is covered;
and if I put this plate into sulphuric acid I get no gas, but this most extraordinary
thing occurs, that if I introduce along with the zinc another metal which is not so
combustible, then I reproduce all the action. I am now going to put to the amalgamated
zinc in this retort some portions of copper wire (copper not being so combustible a metal
as the zinc), and observe how I get hydrogen again, as in the first instance; there, the
bubbles are coming over through the pneumatic trough, and ascending faster and faster in
the jar; the zinc now is acting by reason of its contact with the copper.
Every step we are now taking brings us to a knowledge of new phenomena. That hydrogen
which you now see coming off so abundantly does not come from the zinc, as it did before,
but from the copper. Here is a jar containing a solution of copper. If I put a piece of
this amalgamated zinc into it, and leave it there, it has scarcely any action; and here is
a plate of platinum which I will immerse in the same solution, and might leave it there
for hours, days, months, or even years, and no action would take place; but, by putting
them both together, and allowing them to touch, you see what a coating of copper there is
immediately thrown down on the platinum. Why is this? The platinum has no power of itself
to reduce that metal from that fluid, but it has, in some mysterious way, received this
power by its contact with the metal zinc, Here, then, you see a strange transfer of
chemical force from one metal to another; the chemical force from the zinc is transferred
and made over to the platinum by the mere association of the two metals. I might take,
instead of the platinum, a piece of copper or of silver, and it would have no action of
its own on this solution, but the moment the zinc was introduced and touched the other
metal, then the action would take place, and it would become covered with copper. Now is
not this most wonderful and beautiful to see? We still have the identical chemical force
of the particles of zinc acting, and yet, in some strange manner, we have power to make
that chemical force, or something it produces, travel from one place to another; for we do
make the chemical force travel from the zinc to the platinum by this very curious
experiment of using the two metals in the same fluid in contact with each other.
Let us now examine these phenomena a little more closely. Here is a drawing in which I
have represented a vessel containing the acid liquid and the slips of zinc and platinum or
copper, and I have shown them touching each other outside by means of a wire coming from
each of them (for it matters not whether they touch in the fluid or outside; by pieces of
metal attached, they still, by that communication between them, have this power
transferred from one to the other). Now if, instead of only using one vessel, as I have
shown there, I take another, and another, and put in zinc and platinum, zinc and platinum,
zinc and platinum, and connect the platinum of one vessel with the zinc of another, the
platinum of this vessel with the zinc of that, and so on, we should only be using a series
of these vessels instead of one. This we have done in that arrangement which you see
behind me. I am using what we call a Grove's voltaic battery, in which one metal is zinc
and the other platinum; and I have as many as forty pairs of these plates all exercising
their force at once in sending the whole amount of chemical power there evolved through
these wires under the floor and up to these two rods coming through the table. We need do
no more than just bring these two ends in contact, when the spark shows us what power is
present; and what a strange thing it is to see that this force is brought away from the
battery behind me, and carried along through these wires! I have here an apparatus which
Sir Humphry Davy constructed many years ago, in order to see whether this power from the
voltaic battery caused bodies to attract each other in the same manner as the ordinary
electricity did. He made it in order to experiment with his large voltaic battery, which
was the most powerful then in existence. You see there are in this glass jar two leaves of
gold, which I can cause to move to and fro by this rack-work. I will connect each of these
gold leaves with separate ends of this battery, and if I have a sufficient number of
plates in the battery, I shall be able to show you that there will be some attraction
between those leaves even before they come in contact; if I bring them sufficiently near
when they are in communication with the ends of the battery, they will be drawn gently
together; and you will know when this takes place, because the power will cause the gold
leaves to burn away, which they could only do when they touched each other. Now I am going
to cause these two leaves of gold to approach gradually, and I have no doubt that some of
you will see that they approach before they burn, and those who are too far off to see
them approach will see by their burning that they have come together. Now they are
attracting each other, long before the connection is complete, and there they go! burnt up
in that brilliant flash, so strong is the force. You thus see, from the attractive force
at the two ends of this battery, that these are really and truly electrical phenomena.
Now let us consider what is this spark. I take these two ends and bring them together,
and there I get this glorious spark like the sunlight in the heavens above us. What is
this? It is the same thing which you saw when I discharged the large electrical machine,
when you saw one single bright flash; it is the same thing, only continued, because here
we have a more effective arrangement. Instead of having a machine which we are obliged to
turn for a long time together, we have here a chemical power which sends forth the spark;
and it is wonderful and beautiful to see how this spark is carried about through these
wires. I want you to perceive, if possible, that this very spark and the heat it produces
(for there is heat) is neither more nor less than the chemical force of the zinc - its
very force carried along wires and conveyed to this place. I am about to take a portion of
the zinc and burn it in oxygen gas for the sake of showing you the kind of light produced
by the actual combustion in oxygen gas of some of this metal. [A tassel of zinc-foil was
ignited at a spirit lamp and introduced into a jar of oxygen, when it burnt with a
brilliant light.] That shows you what the affinity is when we come to consider it in its
energy and power. And the zinc is being burned in the battery behind me at a much more
rapid rate than you see in that jar, because the zinc is there dissolving and burning, and
produces here this great electric light. That very same power which in that jar you saw
evolved from the actual combustion of the zinc in oxygen, is carried along these wires and
made evident here; and you may, if you please, consider that the zinc is burning in those
cells, and that this is the light of that burning [bringing the two poles in contact and
showing the electric light]; and we might so arrange our apparatus as to show that the
amounts of power evolved in either case are identical. Having thus obtained power over the
chemical force, how wonderfully we are able to convey it from place to place! When we use
gunpowder for explosive purposes, we can send into the mine chemical affinity by means of
this electricity; not having provided fire beforehand, we can send it in at the moment we
require it. Now here is a vessel containing two charcoal points, and I bring it forward as
an illustration of the wonderful power of conveying this force from place to place. I have
merely to connect these by means of wires to the opposite ends of the battery, and bring
the points in contact. See what an exhibition of force we have! We have exhausted the air
so that the charcoal can not burn, and therefore the light you see is really the burning
of the zinc in the cells behind me; there is no disappearance of the carbon, although we
have that glorious electric light; and the moment I cut off the connection it stops. Here
is a better instance to enable some of you to see the certainty with which we can convey
this force, where under ordinary circumstances, chemical affinity would not act. We may
absolutely take these two charcoal poles down under water, and get our electric light
there. There they are in the water, and you observe, when I bring them into connection, we
have the same light as we had in that glass vessel.
Now besides this production of light, we have all the other effects and powers of
burning zinc. I have a few wires here which are not combustible, and I am going to take
one of them, a small platinum wire, and suspend it between these two rods which are
connected with the battery, and when contact is made at the battery see what heat we get.
Is not that beautiful? It is a complete bridge of power. There is metallic connection all
the way round in this arrangement, and where I have inserted the platinum, which offers
some resistance to the passage of the force, you see what an amount of heat is evolved;
this is the heat which the zinc would give if burnt in oxygen; but, as it is being burnt
in the voltaic battery, it is giving it out at this spot. I will now shorten this wire for
the sake of showing you that, the shorter the obstructing wire is, the more and more
intense is the heat, until at last our platinum is fused and falls down, breaking off the
circuit.
Here is another instance. I will take a piece of the metal silver, and place it on
charcoal connected with one end of the battery, and lower the other charcoal pole on to
it. See how brilliantly it burns! Here is a piece of iron on the charcoal: see what a
combustion is going on; and we might go on in this way, burning almost every thing we
place between the poles. Now I want to show you that this power is still chemical
affinity; that if we call the power which is evolved at this point heat, or electricity,
or any other name referring to its source, or the way in which it travels, we still shall
find it to be chemical action. Here is a colored liquid which can show by its change of
color the effects of chemical action; I will pour part of it into this glass, and you will
find that these wires have a very strong action. I am not going to show you any effects of
combustion or heat, but I will take these two platinum plates, and fasten one to the one
pole and the other to the other end, and place them in this solution, and in a very short
time you will see the blue color will be entirely destroyed. See, it is colorless now! I
have merely brought the end of the wires into the solution of indigo, and the power of
electricity has come through these wires and made itself evident by its chemical action.
There is also another curious thing to be noticed now we are dealing with the chemistry of
electricity, which is, that the chemical power which destroys the color is only due to the
action on one side. I will pour some more of this sulphindigotic acid24 into a
flat dish, and will then make a porous dike of sand separating the two portions of fluid
into two parts, and now we shall be able to see whether there is any difference in the two
ends of the battery, and which it is that possesses this peculiar action. You see it is
the one on my right hand which has the power of destroying the blue, for the portion on
that side is thoroughly bleached, while nothing has apparently occurred on the other side.
I say apparently, for you must not imagine that because you can not perceive any action
none has taken place.
[Footnote 24: Sulphindigotic acid. A mixture of one part of indigo and fifteen parts of
concentrated oil of vitriol. It is bleached on the side at which hydrogen gas is evolved
in consequence of the liberated hydrogen withdrawing oxygen from the indigo, thereby
forming a colorless deoxidized indigo. In making the experiment, only enough of the
sulphindigotic acid must be added to give the water a decided blue color.]
Here we have another instance of chemical action. I take these platinum plates again
and immerse them in this solution of copper, from which we formerly precipitated some of
the metal, when the platinum and zinc were both put in it together. You see that these two
platinum plates have no chemical action of any kind; they might remain in the solution as
long as I liked, without having any power of themselves to reduce the copper; but the
moment I bring the two poles of the battery in contact with them, the chemical action
which is there transformed into electricity and carried along the wires again becomes
chemical action at the two platinum poles, and now we shall have the power appearing on
the left-hand side, and throwing down the copper in the metallic state on the platinum
plate; and in this way I might give you many instances of the extraordinary way in which
this chemical action or electricity may be carried about. That strange nugget of gold, of
which there is a model in the other room, and which has an interest of its own in the
natural history of gold, and which came from Ballarat, and was worth pounds 8,000 or
pounds 9,000 when it was melted down last November, was brought together in the bowels of
the earth, perhaps ages and ages ago, by some such power as this. And there is also
another beautiful result dependent upon chemical affinity in that fine lead-tree25,
the lead growing and growing by virtue of this power. The lead and the zinc are combined
together in a little voltaic arrangement in a manner far more important than the powerful
one you see here, because in nature these minute actions are going on forever, and are of
great and wonderful importance in the precipitation of metals and formation of mineral
veins, and so forth. These actions are not for a limited time, like my battery here, but
they act forever in small degrees, accumulating more and more of the results.
[Footnote 25: Lead tree. To make a lead tree, pass a bundle of brass wires through the
cork of a bottle, and fasten a plate of zinc round them just as they issue from the cork,
so that the zinc may be in contact with every one of the wires. Make the wires to diverge
so as to form a sort of cone, and, having filled the bottle quite full of a solution of
sugar of lead, insert the wires and cork, and seal it down, so as to perfectly exclude the
air. In a short time the metallic lead will begin to crystallize around the divergent
wires, and form a beautiful object.]
I have here given you all the illustrations that time will permit me to show you of
chemical affinity producing electricity, and electricity again becoming chemical affinity.
Let that suffice for the present; and now let us go a little deeper into the subject of
this chemical force, or this electricity - which shall I name first? - the one producing
the other in a variety of ways. These forces are also wonderful in their power of
producing another of the forces we have been considering, namely, that of magnetism; and
you know that it is only of late years, and long since I was born, that the discovery of
the relations of these two forces of electricity and chemical affinity to produce
magnetism has become known. Philosophers had been suspecting this affinity for a long
time, and had long had great hopes of success; for in the pursuit of science we first
start with hopes and expectations; these we realize and establish, never again to be lost,
and upon them we found new expectations of farther discoveries, and so go on pursuing,
realizing, establishing, and founding new hopes again and again.
Now observe this; here is a piece of wire which I am about to make into a bridge of
force, that is to say, a communicator between the two ends of the battery. It is copper
wire only, and is therefore not magnetic of itself. We will examine this wire with our
magnetic needle, and, though connected with one extreme end of the battery, you see that
before the circuit is completed it has no power over the magnet. But observe it when I
make contact; watch the needle; see how it is swung round; and notice how indifferent it
becomes if I break contact again; so, you see, we have this wire evidently affecting the
magnetic needle under these circumstances. Let me show you that a little more strongly. I
have here might give you an infinity of illustrations of this high magnetic power. There
is that long bar of iron held out, and I have no doubt that if I were to examine the other
end I should find that it was a magnet. See what power it must have to support not only
these nails, but all those lumps of iron hanging on to the end. What, then, can surpass
these evidences of the change of chemical force into electricity, and electricity into
magnetism? I might show you many other experiments whereby I could obtain electricity and
chemical action, heat and light from a magnet, but what more need I show you to prove the
universal correlation of the physical forces of matter, and their mutual conversion one
into another?
And now let us give place as juveniles to the respect we owe to our elders, and for a
time let me address myself to those of our seniors who have honored me with their presence
during these lectures. I wish to claim this moment for the purpose of tendering our thanks
to them, and my thanks to you all for the way in which you have borne the inconvenience
that I at first subjected you to. I hope that the insight which you have here gained into
some of the laws by which the universe is governed, may be the occasion of some among you
turning your attention to these subjects; for what study is there more fitted to the mind
of man than that of the physical sciences? And what is there more capable of giving him an
insight into the actions of those laws, a knowledge of which gives interest to the most
trifling phenomenon of nature, and makes the observing student find
"Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in
every thing?"
Source:
Scientific papers: physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, with introductions,
notes and illustrations. New York, P. F. Collier & son [c1910], Harvard classics
no.XXX.
This text is part of the Internet
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