Page:Experimental researches in electricity.djvu/131

Rh of gas is retained within the mass, exalting the tendency of the succeeding portions to combine.

374. I have now to notice some very extraordinary interferences with this phenomenon, dependent, not upon the nature or condition of the metal or other acting solid, but upon the presence of certain substances mingled with the gases acted upon; and as I shall have occasion to speak frequently of a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen, I wish it always to be understood that I mean a mixture composed of one volume oxygen to two volumes of hydrogen, being the proportions that form water. Unless otherwise expressed, the hydrogen was always that obtained by the action of dilute sulphuric acid on pure zinc, and the oxygen that obtained by the action of heat from the chlorate of potassa.

375. Mixtures of oxygen and hydrogen with air, containing one-fourth, one-half, and even two-thirds of the latter, being introduced with prepared platina plates (306, 341) into tubes, were acted upon almost as well as if no air were present: the retardation was far less than might have been expected from the mere dilution and consequent obstruction to the contact of the gases with the plates. In two hours and a half nearly all the oxygen and hydrogen introduced as mixture was gone.

376. But when similar experiments were made with olefiant gas (the platina plates having been made the positive poles of a voltaic pile (306) in acid), very different results occurred. A mixture was made of 29.2 volumes hydrogen and 14.6 volumes oxygen, being the proportions for water; and to this was added another mixture of three volumes oxygen and one volume olefiant gas, so that the olefiant gas formed but $1⁄48$th part of the whole; yet in this mixture the platina plate would not act in forty-five hours. The failure was not for want of any power in the plate, for when after that time it was taken out of this mixture and put into one of oxygen and hydrogen, it immediately acted, and in seven minutes caused explosion of the gas. This result was obtained several times, and when larger proportions of olefiant gas were used, the action seemed still more hopeless.

377. A mixture of forty-nine volumes oxygen and hydrogen (374) with one volume of olefiant gas had a well-prepared platina plate introduced. The diminution of gas was scarcely sensible at the end of two hours, during which it was watched; but on examination twenty-four hours afterwards, the tube was found blown to pieces. The action, therefore, though it had