The unity of matter : being thoughts on the nature, weight, & expansion of gases / by G.T. Carruthers.

  • Carruthers, G. T. (George Thompson)
Date:
[1883]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The unity of matter : being thoughts on the nature, weight, & expansion of gases / by G.T. Carruthers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    It may be right to keep blundering on trying to simplify that which is already simple, but it may be wiser to try to arrive at the unity of matter by some other process. Let us then, leaving the simple forms, take one of the so called compound forms of matter, and, instead of splitting it up into its elements, try rather to raise upon it all other elements. Let us for instance take water. We know that if we place in water the terminals of a battery, two so called simple substances will issue from it; now why may not these be only other forms of watery matter ? It is possible that they may each contain exactly the same constituents as water but have different properties be- cause they contain the watery constituents in widely different proportions. Let us suppose that water is formed of some vapour and some absorbing solid in such a way that the fall of a solid atom, caused by its absorption of the surrounding vapour, would create a heat sufficient to evaporate the amount of vapour absorbed by it; and let watery vapour be the separa- tion of solid particles from the mass under the influence of greater heat by the pouring forth of molecules of matter from their spherical surfaces. In the formation of gases from water, the sudden inter- nal heat and commotion caused by the introduction of the poles of a battery may be supposed to cause the solid parti- cles to be hurled together before the vapour issuing from their inner surfaces could escape, so that hollow metal spheres con- taining vapour would be formed while the outer surfaces would be quite desiccated. In water the very first move- ment of heat produces vapour so that the spheres will have vapour at the tension of freezing point. A true gas may hence be supposed to be formed when the tension of the vapour within the solid is met by the solid's pressure; and the volume of the gas at freezing point is such that when the vapour within condenses, and the solid falls, it produces heat sufficient to evaporate the vapour again to