Familiar Letters on Chemistry | Page 8

into a gaseous state, with an explosion which shatters the tube into fragments; but solid carbonic acid can be handled without producing any other effect than a feeling of intense cold. The particles of the carbonic acid being so closely approximated in the solid, the whole force of cohesive attraction (which in the fluid is weak) becomes exerted, and opposes its tendency to assume its gaseous state; but as it receives heat from surrounding bodies, it passes into gas gradually and without violence. The transition of solid carbonic acid into gas deprives all around it of caloric so rapidly and to so great an extent, that a degree of cold is produced immeasurably great, the greatest indeed known. Ten, twenty, or more pounds weight of mercury, brought into contact with a mixture of ether and solid carbonic acid, becomes in a few moments firm and malleable. This, however, cannot be accomplished without considerable danger. A melancholy accident occurred at Paris, which will probably prevent for the future the formation of solid carbonic acid in these large quantities, and deprive the next generation of the gratification of witnessing these curious experiments. Just before the commencement of the lecture in the Laboratory of the Polytechnic School, an iron cylinder, two feet and a half long and one foot in diameter, in which carbonic acid had been developed for experiment before the class, burst, and its fragments were scattered about with the most tremendous force; it cut off both the legs of the assistant and killed him on the spot. This vessel, formed of the strongest cast-iron, and shaped like a cannon, had often been employed to exhibit experiments in the presence of the students. We can scarcely think, without shuddering, of the dreadful calamity such an explosion would have occasioned in a hall filled with spectators.
When we had ascertained the fact of gases becoming fluid under the influence of cold or pressure, a curious property possessed by charcoal, that of absorbing gas to the extent of many times its volume,--ten, twenty, or even as in the case of ammoniacal gas or muriatic acid gas, eighty or ninety fold,--which had been long known, no longer remained a mystery. Some gases are absorbed and condensed within the pores of the charcoal, into a space several hundred times smaller than they before occupied; and there is now no doubt they there become fluid, or assume a solid state. As in a thousand other instances, chemical action here supplants mechanical forces. Adhesion or heterogeneous attraction, as it is termed, acquired by this discovery a more extended meaning; it had never before been thought of as a cause of change of state in matter; but it is now evident that a gas adheres to the surface of a solid body by the same force which condenses it into a liquid.
The smallest amount of a gas,--atmospheric air for instance,--can be compressed into a space a thousand times smaller by mere mechanical pressure, and then its bulk must be to the least measurable surface of a solid body, as a grain of sand to a mountain. By the mere effect of mass,--the force of gravity,--gaseous molecules are attracted by solids and adhere to their surfaces; and when to this physical force is added the feeblest chemical affinity, the liquifiable gases cannot retain their gaseous state. The amount of air condensed by these forces upon a square inch of surface is certainly not measurable; but when a solid body, presenting several hundred square feet of surface within the space of a cubic inch, is brought into a limited volume of gas, we may understand why that volume is diminished, why all gases without exception are absorbed. A cubic inch of charcoal must have, at the lowest computation, a surface of one hundred square feet. This property of absorbing gases varies with different kinds of charcoal: it is possessed in a higher degree by those containing the most pores, i.e. where the pores are finer; and in a lower degree in the more spongy kinds, i.e. where the pores are larger.
In this manner every porous body--rocks, stones, the clods of the fields, &c.,--imbibe air, and therefore oxygen; the smallest solid molecule is thus surrounded by its own atmosphere of condensed oxygen; and if in their vicinity other bodies exist which have an affinity for oxygen, a combination is effected. When, for instance, carbon and hydrogen are thus present, they are converted into nourishment for vegetables,--into carbonic acid and water. The development of heat when air is imbibed, and the production of steam when the earth is moistened by rain, are acknowledged to be consequences of this condensation by the action of surfaces.
But the most remarkable and interesting case of this kind of action is the imbibition of oxygen by metallic platinum.