Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/672

652 molecule. For, were the absorption intra-molecular, the passage from the liquid to the vaporous condition, which leaves the molecules intact, could not abolish the absorption. So far back as 1864 the lecturer had proved that when vapors, in quantities proportional to the densities of their liquids, were examined in the experimental tube, the order of their absorptions was precisely that of the liquids from which they were derived. This result has been recently tested and verified in the most ample manner by means of the apparatus in which internal reflection never comes into play. It furnishes, therefore, the strongest presumptive evidence that the seat of absorption in liquids and in vapors is the same.

As a problem of molecular physics it was, however, in the highest degree desirable to compare together equal quantities, instead of proportional quantities, of liquids and vapors. Highly volatile liquids alone lend themselves to this experiment, for only in the case of such liquids can vapors be obtained sufficient, when caused to assume the liquid form, to produce layers of practicable thickness. Two cases, however, have been very fully worked out, the substances employed being the hydride of amyl and sulphuric ether. Careful and exact experiments, many times repeated, lead to the result that when the number of molecules traversed by the calorific rays in the vapor is the same as that traversed in the liquid, the absorptions are identical. In the silvered experimental tube, which, as stated, is 38 inches long, hydride of amyl vapor, at a mercury pressure of 6·6 inches, is equivalent to a liquid layer one millimetre in thickness, while a vapor column of sulphuric ether, of the same length, and 7·2 inches pressure, would also produce a liquid layer one millimetre thick. The experiment has been made with the utmost care, both with the lime-light and the incandescent platinum, with the result that it is impossible to say that there is any difference between the vapor absorption and the liquid absorption. In the face of such facts the vapor-hesion hypothesis, as an explanation of the results published by the lecturer, can not be sustained.

On the 29th of November, 1880, he had the pleasure of witnessing, in the laboratory of the Royal Institution, the experiments of Mr. Graham Bell, wherein a concentrated luminous beam, rendered intermittent by a rotating peforatedperforated [sic] disk, was caused to impinge upon various solid substances, and to produce musical sounds. Mr. Bell's previous experiments upon selenium naturally led him to conclude that the effect was produced by the luminous rays of the spectrum. The contemplation of these experiments produced in the lecturer the conviction that the results were due to the intermittent absorption of radiant heat. He was experimenting on vapors at this time. Substituting in idea gaseous for solid matter, he clearly pictured the sudden expansion of an absorbent gas or vapor at every stroke of the calorific beam, and its contraction when the beam was intercepted. Pulses far