Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/607

Rh student a knowledge of the three great laws of Mariotte, of Charles, and of Avogadro. He must be made to understand how molecules are defined by the physicist, and how their relative weights may be inferred by a comparison of vapor densities. He should then be made to compare the relative molecular weights, deduced by physical means, with the definite proportions he has observed in chemical processes. He will thus himself be led to the conclusion that these definite proportions are the proportions of the molecular weights, and that the constancy of the law arises from the fact that in every chemical process the action takes place between molecules, and that the products of the process are new molecules, preserving always, of course, their definite relative weights. The student will thus be brought to the chemical conception of the molecule as the smallest mass of any substance in which the qualities inhere, and he will come to regard a chemical process as always taking place between molecules.

Thus far nothing has been said about the composition of matter. A chemical process has been defined simply as certain factors yielding certain products, but nothing has been determined about the relations of these several substances except in so far as they are defined by the three laws illustrated above. But now it must be shown that a study of different chemical processes compels us to conclude that in some cases two or more substances unite to form a compound, while in other cases a compound is broken up into simpler parts. Thus, when copper filings are heated in the air, it is evident that the material of the copper has united with that portion of the air we call oxygen to form the black product we call oxide of copper; and again, when oxide of silver is heated, it is evident that the resulting silver and oxygen gas were formerly portions of the material of the oxide. So, when water is decomposed by electricity, the conditions of the experiment show that the resulting oxygen and hydrogen gases must have come from the material of the water, and could have come from nothing else.

Experiments should now be multiplied until the student has a perfectly clear idea of the nature of the evidence on which our knowledge of the composition of bodies depends. The decomposition of chlorate of potash by heat, yielding chloride of potassium and oxygen gas; the decomposition of nitrate of ammonium by heat, yielding nitrous oxide and water; the decomposition of this resulting nitrous oxide, when the gas is passed over heated metallic copper; and, lastly, the decomposition already referred to, of water by electricity, are all striking experiments by which the evidence of chemical composition may be enforced.

The distinction between elementary and compound substances having been clearly defined by the course of reasoning already given in outline, the next aim should bB to lead the student to comprehend how substances are analyzed and their composition expressed in percents. The reduction of oxide of copper by hydrogen gives readily the data