or stop-cocks, as described, but it is important to remember the softening action on the cement which, being continued, at last reduces its strength below the necessary point. A tube of this kind was arranged on the 10th of January and left; on the 15th of February it exploded, not by any fracture of the tube, for that remained unbroken, but simply by throwing off the cap through a failure of the cement. Hence the cement joints should not be used for long experiments, but only for those enduring for a few days.
Oxygen.—Chlorate of potassa was melted and pulverized. Oxide of manganese was pulverized, heated red-hot for half an hour, mixed whilst hot with the chlorate, and the mixture put into a long strong glass generating tube with a cap cemented on, and this tube then attached to another with a gauge for condensation. The heat of a spirit lamp carefully applied produced the evolution of oxygen without any appearance of water, and the tubes, both hot and cold, sustained the force generated. In this manner the pressure of oxygen within the apparatus was raised as high as 58.5 atmospheres, whilst the temperature at the condensing place was reduced as low as -140° Fahr., but no condensation appeared. A little above this pressure the cement of two of the caps began to leak, and I could carry the observation no further with this apparatus.
From the former scanty and imperfect expressions of the elasticity of the vapour of the condensed gases. Dove. was led to put forth a suggestion,[1] whether it might not ultimately appear that the same addition of heat (expressed in degrees of the thermometer) caused the same
- ↑ Poggendorff's Annalen, xxiii. 290; or Thomson on Heat and Electricity, p. 9.
