United States or Mongolia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
This cosmic gas, in the course of time, began to lose its heat, and consequently to liquefy and solidify, according to the different nature of its components; and thus a globe with a solid crust was formed, the surface of which was partly dry and partly occupied by water, and diversified by the abundant production of the various earths, gases, metals, and other substances with which we are familiar.
Others, who knew nothing of chemistry, were torturing it in every possible way beating it with hammers, to see if it would expand, like gold, into leaf; but instead of this, it only flew off in splinters: then putting it into the smith's forge, to see if it would liquefy and separate from the dross, but it only evaporated in fumes, which drove them from the smithy by their offensive odour.
All at once we find that a simple substance changes face, puts off its characteristic qualities and resumes them at will; not merely when we liquefy or vaporize a solid, or reverse the process; but that a solid is literally transformed into another solid under our own eyes. We thought we knew phosphorus. We warm a portion of it sealed in an empty tube, for about a week.
The blood of St. Januarius must liquefy whether the Saint is in the humor or not. To trick a heathen into being a dutiful Christian is no worse than to trick a whitewasher into trusting himself in a room where a smallpox patient has lain, by pretending to exorcise the disease with burning sulphur.
It may be noted that Mr. Lowell objects to the carbon-dioxide theory of the formation of the snow-caps, that this gas at low pressures does not liquefy, but passes at once from the solid to the gaseous state, and that only water remains liquid sufficiently long to produce the blue colour' which plays so large a part in his argument for the mild climate essential for an inhabited planet.
'But when the night comes, he asked, 'is it not cold? "I told him it was colder than by day. "'And does not your atmosphere freeze? "I told him not; that it was never cold enough for that, because our nights were so short. "'Not even liquefy?
The liver, the lung, the spleen are attacked to better purpose, without, however, getting beyond the state of a semi-fluid jam, which easily mixes with water and even appears to dissolve in it. The brains do not liquefy either: they simply melt into a thin gruel. On the other hand, fatty substances, such as beef suet, lard and butter, do not undergo any appreciable change.
Softly, almost imperceptibly, he drops his arms, and lets fall the viewless barrier which he had raised with them; he remains where he was, but the immense bodies he had stayed liquefy and move in their opposite courses, and for that time the block is over. If ever London has her epic poet, I think he will sing the omnibus; but the poet who sings the hansom must be of a lyrical note.
The moist gas, exposed to a cold of 32 deg., yields beautiful yellow crystals, which are a definite compound of one equivalent of chlorine and ten of water. If these crystals are hermetically sealed up in a glass tube, they will, on melting, exert such a pressure as to liquefy a portion of the gas, which is distinctly seen as a yellow fluid, not miscible with the water which is present.
This intensification of cooling goes on until the expansion-temperature is far lower than it was at starting; and if the apparatus be well arranged the effect is so powerful that even the smaller amount of cooling due to the free expansion of gas through a throttle-valve, though pronounced by Siemens and Coleman incapable of being utilized, may be made to liquefy air without using other refrigerants."
Word Of The Day