What is heat? : a peep into nature's most hidden secrets / by Frederick Hovenden.

  • Hovenden, Frederick.
Date:
1894
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: What is heat? : a peep into nature's most hidden secrets / by Frederick Hovenden. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    point, it slowly absorbs oxygen, and becomes converted into a crystalline dark-red powder, which is the highest oxide. At a dull red heat this oxide is again decomposed into its constituents.* Or consider the water molecule at a certain great strain arising from the internal pressure of ether: the molecule splits up into oxygen and hydrogen gases. At a lower strain these elementary objects, oxygen and hydrogen gases, overwrap each other—that is combine, give out ether; they form the vapour molecules of water—steam, which in its turn gives off ether to form water in the gaseous form, or ultimately condenses into the hquid water molecule. This important view of this great question wants careful study. It is quite in harmony with the concepts enunciated in this work. Thus water, although such a stable compound, is resolved into a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen gases at temperatures above 1200°. t We have seen that whenever matter in mass con- tracts after chemical combination, we have an evolution of ether, and such reaction is called by the chemist exother- nwus compounds; and when the inverse process takes place—that is, when the volume of matter increases as the result of chemical reaction—we have an absorption of ether * Watts' Manual of Chemistry (2nd edition), by Prof. William A. Tilden, F.R.S., Vol. I., 1889, p. 391. I The New Chemistry, by Prof. J. P. Cooke, LL.D. (10th edition), 1892, p. 389.