Page:On the various forces of nature and their relations to each other.djvu/92

88 wires (A and B) coming outside, and I want to examine that water, and the state and the condition in which its particles are arranged. If I were to apply heat to it, you know what we should get; it would assume the state of vapour, but it would nevertheless remain water, and would return to the liquid state as soon as the heat was removed. Now, by means of these wires (which are connected with the battery behind me, and come under the floor and up through the table), we shall have a certain amount of this new power at our disposal. Here you see it is [causing the ends of the wires to touch]—that is the electric light we used yesterday, and by means of these wires we can cause water to submit itself to this power; for the moment I put them into metallic connection (at A and B), you see the water boiling in that little vessel (C), and you hear the bubbling of the gas that is going through the tube (D). See how I am converting the water into vapour; and if I take a little vessel (E), and fill it with water, and put it in the trough over the end of the tube (D), there goes the vapour ascending into the vessel. And yet that is not