Page:Experimental researches in chemistry and.djvu/137

122 through a failure of the cement. Hence the cement joints should not be used for long experiments, but only for those enduring for a few days.

Oxygen.—Chlorate of potasa was melted and pulverized. Oxide of manganese was pulverized, heated red-hot for half an hour, mixed whilst hot with the chlorate, and the mixture put into a long strong glass generating tube with a cap cemented on, and this tube then attached to another with a gauge for condensation. The heat of a spirit-lamp carefully applied produced the evolution of oxygen without any appearance of water, and the tubes, both hot and cold, sustained the force generated. In this manner the pressure of oxygen within the apparatus was raised as high as 58.5 atmospheres, whilst the temperature at the condensing place was reduced as low as -140° Fahr., but no condensation appeared. A little above this pressure the cement of two of the caps began to leak, and I could carry the observation no further with this apparatus.

From the former scanty and imperfect expressions of the elasticity of the vapour of the condensed gases, Dove was led to put forth a suggestion, whether it might not ultimately appear that the same addition of heat (expressed in degrees of the thermometer) caused the same additional increase of expansive force for all gases or vapours in contact with their liquids, provided the observation began with the same pressure in all. Thus to obtain the difference between forty-four and fifty atmospheres of pressure, either with steam or nitrous oxide, nearly the same number of degrees of heat were required; to obtain the difference between twenty and twenty five atmospheres, either with steam or muriatic acid, the same number were required. Such a law would of course make the rate of increasing expansive force the same for all bodies, and the curve laid down for steam would apply to every other vapour. This, however, does not appear to be the case. That the force of the vapour increases in a geometrical ratio for equal increments of heat is true for all bodies, but the ratio is not the same for all. As far as observations upon the