Page:Life and death (1911).djvu/97

 system, adopted by the Norwegian chemists, Guldberg and Waage, by means of the product of the masses and of a force, or co-efficient of affinity, which depends on the nature of the substances which are brought together, on the temperature, and on the other physical circumstances of the reaction. On the other hand, the researches of M. Berthelot enable us in many cases to obtain an indirect valuation in terms of the equivalent heat.

Its Two Forms.—It is interesting to note that chemical energy may also be regarded from the two states of potential and kinetic energy. The coal-oxygen system, to burn in the furnace of the steam engine, must be primed by preliminary work (local ignition), just as the weight that is raised and left motionless at a certain height requires a small effort to be detached from its support. When this condition is fulfilled, energy is at once manifest. We must admit that it existed in the latent state, in the state of chemical potential energy. Under the impulse received, the carbon combines with the oxygen and forms carbonic acid, C + 2O becomes CO_{2}; potential energy is changed into actual chemical energy, and immediately afterwards into thermal energy. We should have only a very incomplete and fragmentary view of the reality of things if we were to consider this phenomenon of combustion in isolation. We must consider it in connection with what has actually created the energy which it is about to dissipate. This antecedent fact is the action of the sun upon the green leaf. The carbon which burns in the furnace of the machine comes from the mine in which it was stored in the form of coal—that is to say, of a product which was vegetable in its primitive form,