Page:Various Forces of Matter.djvu/81

Rh particles, and yet you see that there is a good deal of attractive force remaining behind. I want now to take you another step beyond. We saw that if we continued applying heat to the water (as indeed happened with our piece of ice here), that we did at last break up that attraction which holds the liquid together, and I am about to take some ether (any other liquid would do, but ether makes a better experiment for my purpose,) in order to illustrate what will happen when this cohesion is broken up. Now this liquid ether, if exposed to a very low temperature, will become a solid, but if we apply heat to it, it becomes vapour, and I want to show you the enormous bulk of the substance in this new form:—when we make ice into water, we lessen its bulk, but when we convert water into steam, we increase it to an enormous extent. You see it is very clear that as I apply heat to the liquid I diminish its attraction of cohesion—it is now boiling, and I will set fire to the vapour, so that you may be enabled to judge of the space occupied by the ether in this form by the size of its flame, and you now see what an enormously bulky flame I get from that small volume of ether below. The heat