Page:Experimental researches in chemistry and.djvu/332

1831.] condition; for the powder of each parcel continues to rise up at the centre and flow down on every side to the bottom, where it enters the mass to ascend at the centre again, until the plate has nearly ceased to vibrate. If the plate be made to vibrate strongly, these parcels are immediately broken up, being thrown into the air, and form clouds, which settle down as before; but if the plate be made to vibrate in a smaller degree, by a more moderate application of the bow, the little hemispherical parcels are thrown into commotion without being sensibly separated from the plate and often slowly travel towards the quiescent lines. When one or more of them have thus receded from the place over which the clouds are always formed, and a powerful application of the bow is made, sufficient to raise the clouds, it will be seen that these heaps rapidly diminish, the particles of which they are composed being swept away from them, and passing back in a current over the glass to the clouds under formation, which ultimately settles as before into the same four groups of heaps. These effects may be repeated any number of times, and it is evident that the four parts into which the plate may be considered as divided by the diagonal lines are repetitions of one effect.

7. The form of the little heaps, and the involved motion they acquire, are no part of the phenomena under consideration at present. They depend upon the adhesion of the particles to each other and to the plate, combined with the action of the air or surrounding medium, and will be resumed hereafter (53). The point in question is the manner in which fine particles do not merely remain at the centres of oscillation, or places of greatest agitation, but are actually driven towards them, and that with so much the more force as the vibrations are more powerful.

8. That the agitated substance should be in very fine powder, or very light, appears to be the only condition necessary for success; fine scrapings from a common quill, even when the eighth of an inch in length or more, will show the effect. Chemically pure and finely divided silica rivals lycopodium in the beauty of its arrangement at the vibrating parts of the plate, although the same substance in sand or heavy particles proceeds to the lines of rest. Peroxide of tin, red lead, vermilion, sulphate of baryta, and other heavy powders