Page:Experimental researches in chemistry and.djvu/280

1829.] room in which a powerful furnace was at work, were competent to do much harm in eighteen or twenty-four hours, by giving colour and forming striae, experiments were made on the means of cleansing the entering air. It was found easy to effect this, by the assistance of two or three Woulfe's bottles, or two or three jars, inverted one within another, using at the same time portions of diluted sulphuric acid, or such solutions of salts in the vessels as would not supply any moisture to the air, but rather take water with the dust from it. In these cases the air did not bubble through the liquid, but only passed close to its surface, and had time to deposit its dust during its passage through the enclosed spaces above the fluid; but finally a still simpler arrangement was used, consisting merely of a plug of clean dry sponge fitted into the end of the tube, which, at the same time that it allowed sufficient air to pass, seemed, from the appearance of the tube afterwards, to have excluded every impurity.

71. There are two conditions of the finished glass, each of great importance, which it is the object of the process to secure in this state of the substance. One, and the most essential, is the absence of all striæ and irregularities of composition; the other, the absence of even the most minute bubbles. The first is obtained by agitation and perfect mixture of the whole; the latter, principally by a state of repose: so that the means required to be successful on both points are directly opposed to each other. Were the glass absolutely incapable of change by the long-continued action of heat, it would be easy first to render it uniform by stirring, and then to leave it in a quiescent state, until the bubbles had disappeared; but I am not yet fully assured of the fact which is necessary to this order of proceedings. That the glass, as far as proportions are concerned, if changed at all, is altered only in an extremely minute and inappreciable degree, is shown by some experiments, in which, after a portion had been prepared and heated for many hours, and also stirred well, the resulting piece was divided into smaller portions, and these heated at different temperatures, in platinum trays, for sixteen hours. Three portions were heated as power. fully, as the furnace would admit of; three only to redness, which may be considered as a very low heat; and three to an intermediate degree: all were cooled slowly and annealed for an