On the tendency of air and the different gases to mutual penetration : a probationary essay, submitted to the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow / by Thomas Graham.

  • Graham, Thomas, 1805-1869.
Date:
1830
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the tendency of air and the different gases to mutual penetration : a probationary essay, submitted to the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow / by Thomas Graham. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    or crack in glass receivers, from which I set out in this inquiry. Having occasion while engaged in his re- searches on spongy platinum, to collect large quantities of hydrogen gas, he had accidentally made use of a jar which had a slight crack or fissure in it. He was sur- prised to find that the water of the pneumatic trough rose into this jar 11 inches in 12 hours; and that after 24 hours, the height of the water was 2 inches two- thirds. During the experiment neither the height of the barometer, nor the temperature of the place had sensibly altered. In other experiments, he substituted glass vessels of very different forms, tubes, bell-jai's, flasks, all of which had fissures. In every one of these vessels filled with hydrogen, the water rose, after some hoursj to a cer- tain height. On covering one of these vessels contain- ing hydrogen, by a receiver; or on filling the vessel with atmospheric air, oxygen, or azote, instead of hy- drogen, he never observed a change in the original volume of the gas. He thinks it probable that the phenomenon is due to the capillary action of the fissure^ and that hydrogen only is attracted by the fissures, and escapes through them on account of the extreme smallness of its atoms. This explanation is rendered improbable by the cir- cuhistance, that hydrogen, of all the gases, was found to be condensed and absorbed with greatest difficulty and in smallest quantity, by charcoal and the other porous substances tried by Saussure. And we have no reason to suppose that the particles of hydrogen are smaller than those of the other gases. On repeating the experiment of Doebereiner, and