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114 steam before we can convert it into boiling water. In fact, if it is difficult and tedious to convert water into steam, it is difficult and tedious to convert steam into water.

158. Besides the case now mentioned, there are other instances in which, no doubt, molecular separation becomes gradually changed into heat motion. Thus, when a piece of glass has been suddenly cooled, its particles have not had time to acquire their proper position, and the consequence is that the whole structure is thrown into a state of constraint. In the course of time such bodies tend to assume a more stable state, and their particles gradually come closer together.

It is owing to this cause that the bulb of a thermometer recently blown gradually contracts, and it is no doubt owing to the same cause that a Prince Rupert's drop, formed by dropping melted glass into water, when broken, falls into powder with a kind of explosion. It seems probable that an all such cases these changes are attended with heat, and that they denote the conversion of the energy of molecular separation into that of molecular motion.

159. Having thus examined the transmutations of (C) into (D), and of (D) back again into (C), let us now proceed with our list, and see under what circumstances absorbed heat is changed into chemical separation.

It is well known that when certain bodies are heated, they are decomposed; for instance, if limestone or