Page:Various Forces of Matter.djvu/73

Rh because it will serve as a convenient source of heat [placing the red-hot iron in the centre of the block of ice]. You see I am now melting the ice where the iron touches it. You see the iron sinking into it, and while part of the solid water is becoming liquid, the heat of the ball is rapidly going off. A certain part of the water is actually rising in steam—the attraction of some of the particles is so much diminished that they cannot even hold together in the liquid form, but escape as vapour. At the same time you see I cannot melt all this ice by the heat contained in this ball. In the course of a very short time I shall find it will have become quite cold.

Here is the water which we have produced by destroying some of the attraction which existed between the particles of the ice, for below a certain temperature the particles of water increase in their mutual attraction and become ice; and above a certain temperature the attraction decreases and the water becomes steam. And exactly the same thing happens with platinum, and nearly every substance in nature; if the temperature is increased to a certain point it becomes liquid, and a further