CHAPTER NINE
MINGLING OF MOLECULES
Section 41. Solutions and emulsions.
How does soap make your hands clean?
Why will gasoline take a grease spot out of your clothes?
If we were to go back to our convenient imaginary switchboard to turn off another law, we should find near the heat switches, and not far from the chemistry ones, a switch labeled Solution. Suppose we turned it off:
The fishes in the sea are among the first creatures to be surprised by our action. For instantly all the salt in the ocean drops to the bottom like so much sand, and most salt-water fishes soon perish in the fresh water.
If some one is about to drink a cup of tea and has sweetened it just to his taste, you can imagine his amazement when, bringing it to his lips, he finds himself drinking tasteless, white, milky water. Down in the bottom of the cup is a sediment of sugar, like so much fine gravel, with a brownish dust of tea covering it.
To see whether or not the trouble is with the sugar itself, he may take some sugar out of the bowl and taste it,—it is just like white sand. Wondering what has happened, and whether he or the sugar is at fault, he reaches for the vinegar cruet. The vinegar is no longer clear, but is a colorless liquid with tiny specks of brown floating about in it. Tasting it, he thinks it must be dusty water. Salt, pepper, mustard, onions, or anything he eats, is absolutely tasteless, although some of the things smell as strong as ever.
To tell the truth, I doubt if the man has a chance to do all of this experimenting. For the salt in his blood turns to solid hard grains, and the dissolved food in the blood turns to dustlike particles. His blood flows through him, a muddy stream of sterile water. The cells of his body get no food, and even before they miss the food, most of the cells shrivel to drops of muddy water. The whole man collapses.