properties is not less remarkable, more especially in the little power they possess of conducting heat, and in the small degree of expansion to which they are liable when heated.
For the purpose of making a comparison of the conducting powers of different metals, I endeavoured to employ them in such a manner, that the same weight of each metal might expose the same extent of surface. With that view I selected pieces of silver, of copper, of palladium, and platina, which had been laminated so thin as to weigh each 10 grains to the square inch. Of these I cut slips 4⁄10 of an inch in breadth, and four inches long; and having covered their surfaces with wax, I heated one extremity so as to be visibly red, and, observing the distance to which the wax was melted, I found that upon the silver it had melted as far as 3¼ inches: upon the copper 2½ inches: but upon the palladium and upon the platina only 1 inch each: a difference sufficient to establish the peculiarity of these metals, although the conducting power cannot be said to be simply in proportion to those distances.
In order to form some estimate of the comparative rate of expansion of these metals, I rivetted together two thin plates of platina and of palladium; and observing that the compound plate, when heated, became concave on the side of the platina, I ascertained that the expansion of palladium is in some degree the greater of the two. By a similar mode of comparison I found that palladium expands considerably less than steel by heat; so that if the expansion of platina between the temperatures of freezing and boiling water be estimated at 9 parts in 10,000, while that of steel is known to be about 12, the expansion of palladium will probably not be much more or less than 10, or one part in 1000 by the same difference of temperature.
