Chemistry / [Raphael Meldola].

  • Meldola, Raphael, 1849-1915.
Date:
[1914?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Chemistry / [Raphael Meldola]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    55/272 (page 51)
    imaginary being with such an exalted sense of vision—they might differ in size or shape or weight, or they might be moving about with different velocities. Thus, our hypothetical being might be supposed to know an oxygen particle from a nitrogen particle ; and if a sample of air were submitted to him for examination, what would he find ? He would see the oxygen particles and the nitrogen particles mixed up, moving about among each other, and bombarding the sides of the containing vessel, colliding and rebounding— all in a higgledy-piggledy way; but the two kinds of particles would throughout their evolutions remain distinct, each after its kind; there would be no fusion together or combination, and each kind, even if tem- porarily deformed by collisions, would preserve its weight as well as its average rate of movement. This ideal picture of the inner state of affairs in gaseous matter is a physical conception, and is in harmony with all those general properties of gases which the student learns from the science of Physics. If the picture be a true representation of the facts, it follows that the homogeneity of air is apparent, and not real; its particles, could we see them, would not be all alike as they would be if it were a