air to evaporate from the interior of this empty bulb being called 1, in each of the eight sets of triple tubes, the times required for the same quantity to boil off from the other pairs of tubes were as follows:—
| Charcoal | 5 | Lampblack | 5 |
| Magnesia | 2 | Silica | 4 |
| Graphite | 1.3 | Lampblack | 4 |
| Alumina | 3.3 | Lycopodium | 2.5 |
| Calcium carbonate | 2.5 | Barium carbonate | 1.3 |
| Calcium fluoride | 1.25 | Calcium phosphate | 2.7 |
| Phosphorus (amorphous) | 1 | Lead oxide | 2 |
| Mercuric iodide | 1.5 | Bismuth oxide | 6 |
Other experiments of the same kind made—(a) with similar vacuum vessels, but with the powders replaced by metallic and other septa; and (b) with vacuum vessels having their walls silvered, yielded the following results:—
| (a) | Vacuum space empty | 1 |
| Three turns silver paper, bright surface inside | 4 | |
| Three turns silver paper, bright surfaceoutside | 4 | |
| Vacuum space empty | 1 | |
| Three turns black paper, black outside | 3 | |
| Three turns black paper, black inside | 3 | |
| Vacuum space empty | 1 | |
| Three turns gold paper, gold outside | 4 | |
| Some pieces of gold-leaf put in so as to make contact between walls of vacuum-tube | 0.3 | |
| Vacuum space empty | 1 | |
| Three turns, not touching, of sheet lead | 4 | |
| Three turns, not touching, of sheet aluminium | 4 | |
| (b) | Vacuum space empty, silvered on inside surfaces | 1 |
| Silica in silvered vacuum space | 1.1 | |
| Empty silvered vacuum | 1 | |
| Charcoal in silvered vacuum | 1.25 |
It appears from these experiments that silica, charcoal, lampblack, and oxide of bismuth all increase the heat insulations to four, five and six times that of the empty vacuum space. As the chief communication of heat through an exhausted space is by molecular bombardment, the fine powders must shorten the free path of the gaseous molecules, and the slow conduction of heat through the porous mass must make the conveyance of heat-energy more difficult than when the gas molecules can impinge upon the relatively hot outer glass surface, and then directly on the cold one without interruption. (See Proc. Roy. Inst. xv. 821-826.)
Density of Solids and Coefficients of Expansion at Low Temperatures.—The facility with which liquid gases, like oxygen or nitrogen, can be guarded from evaporation by the proper use of vacuum vessels (now called Dewar vessels), naturally suggests that the specific gravities of solid bodies can be got by direct weighing when immersed in such fluids. If the density of the liquid gas is accurately known, then the loss of weight by fluid displacement gives the specific gravity compared to water. The metals and alloys, or substances that can be got in large crystals, are the easiest to manipulate. If the body is only to be had in small crystals, then it must be compressed under strong hydraulic pressure into coherent blocks weighing about 40 to 50 grammes. Such an amount of material gives a very accurate density of the body about the boiling point of air, and a similar density taken in a suitable liquid at the ordinary temperature enables the mean coefficient of expansion between +15° C. and −185° C. to be determined. One of the most interesting results is that the density of ice at the boiling point of air is not more than 0.93, the mean coefficient of expansion being therefore 0.000081. As the value of the same coefficient between 0° C. and −27° C. is 0.000155, it is clear the rate of contraction is diminished to about one-half of what it was above the melting point of the ice. This suggests that by no possible cooling at our command is it likely we could ever make ice as dense as water at 0° C., far less 4° C. In other words, the volume of ice at the zero of temperature would not be the minimum volume of the water molecule, though we have every reason to believe it would be so in the case of the majority of known substances. Another substance of special interest is solid carbonic acid. This body has a density of 1.53 at −78° C. and 1.633 at −185° C., thus giving a mean coefficient of expansion between these temperatures of 0.00057. This value is only about 16 of the coefficient of expansion of the liquid carbonic acid gas just above its melting point, but it is still much greater at the low temperature than that of highly expansive solids like sulphur, which at 40° C. has a value of 0.00019. The following table gives the densities at the temperature of boiling liquid air (−185° C.) and at ordinary temperatures (17° C.), together with the mean coefficient of expansion between those temperatures, in the case of a number of hydrated salts and other substances:
Table I.
| Density at −185° C. | Density at +17° C. |
Mean coefficient of expansion between −185° C. and +17° C. | |
| Aluminium sulphate (18)* | 1.7194 | 1.6913 | 0.0000811 |
| Sodium biborate (10) | 1.7284 | 1.6937 | 0.0001000 |
| Calcium chloride (6) | 1.7187 | 1.6775 | 0.0001191 |
| Magnesium chloride (6) | 1.6039 | 1.5693 | 0.0001072 |
| Potash alum (24) | 1.6414 | 1.6144 | 0.0000813 |
| Chrome alum (24) | 1.7842 | 1.7669 | 0.0000478 |
| Sodium carbonate (10) | 1.4926 | 1.4460 | 0.0001563 |
| Sodium phosphate (12) | 1.5446 | 1.5200 | 0.0000787 |
| Sodium thiosulphate (5) | 1.7635 | 1.7290 | 0.0000969 |
| Potassium ferrocyanide (3) | 1.8988 | 1.8533 | 0.0001195 |
| Potassium ferricyanide | 1.8944 | 1.8109 | 0.0002244 |
| Sodium nitro-prusside (4) | 1.7196 | 1.6803 | 0.0001138 |
| Ammonium chloride | 1.5757 | 1.5188 | 0.0001820 |
| Oxalic acid (2) | 1.7024 | 1.6145 | 0.0002643 |
| Methyl oxalate | 1.5278 | 1.4260 | 0.0003482 |
| Paraffin | 0.9770 | 0.9103 | 0.0003567 |
| Naphthalene | 1.2355 | 1.1589 | 0.0003200 |
| Chloral hydrate | 1.9744 | 1.9151 | 0.0001482 |
| Urea | 1.3617 | 1.3190 | 0.0001579 |
| Iodoform | 4.4459 | 4.1955 | 0.0002930 |
| Iodine | 4.8943 | 4.6631 | 0.0002510 |
| Sulphur | 2.0989 | 2.0522 | 0.0001152 |
| Mercury | 14.382 | .. | 0.0000881** |
| Sodium | 1.0056 | 0.972 | 0.0001810 |
| Graphite (Cumberland) | 2.1302 | 2.0990 | 0.0000733 |
| * The figures within parentheses refer to the number of molecules of water of crystallization. |
| ** −189° to −38.85° C. |
It will be seen from this table that, with the exception of carbonate of soda and chrome alum, the hydrated salts have a coefficient of expansion that does not differ greatly from that of ice at low temperatures. Iodoform is a highly expansive body like iodine, and oxalate of methyl has nearly as great a coefficient as paraffin, which is a very expansive solid, as are naphthalene and oxalic acid. The coefficient of solid mercury is about half that of the liquid metal, while that of sodium is about the value of mercury at ordinary temperatures. Further details on the subject can be found in the Proc. Roy. Inst. (1895), and Proc. Roy. Soc. (1902).
Density of Gases at Low Temperatures.—The ordinary mode of determining the density of gases may be followed, provided that the glass flask, with its carefully ground stop-cock sealed on, can stand an internal pressure of about five atmospheres, and that all the necessary corrections for change of volume are made. All that is necessary is to immerse the exhausted flask in boiling oxygen, and then to allow the second gas to enter from a gasometer by opening the stop-cock until the pressure is equalized. The stop-cock being closed, the flask is now taken out of the liquid oxygen and left in the balance-room until its temperature is equalized. It is then weighed against a similar flask used as a counterpoise. Following such a method, it has been found that the weight of 1 litre of oxygen vapour at its boiling point of 90.5° absolute is 4.420 grammes, and therefore the specific volume is 226.25 cc. According to the ordinary gaseous laws, the litre ought to weigh 4.313 grammes, and the specific volume should be 231.82 cc. In other words, the product of pressure and volume at the boiling point is diminished by 2.46%. In a similar way the weight of a litre of nitrogen vapour at the boiling point of oxygen was found to be 3.90, and the inferred value for 78° absolute, or its own boiling point, would be 4.51, giving a specific volume of 221.3.
Regenerative Cooling.—One part of the problem being thus solved and a satisfactory device discovered for warding off heat in such vacuum vessels, it remained to arrange some practically efficient method for reducing hydrogen to a temperature sufficiently low for liquefaction. To gain that end, the idea naturally occurred of using adiabatic expansion, not intermittently, as when gas is allowed to expand suddenly from a high compression, but in a continuous process, and an obvious way of attempting to carry out this condition was to enclose the orifice at which expansion takes place in a tube, so as to obtain a constant stream of cooled gas passing over it. But further consideration of this plan showed that although the gas jet would be cooled near the point of expansion owing to the conversion of a portion of its sensible heat into dynamical energy of the moving gas, yet the heat it thus lost would be restored to it almost
