Besides these 66 elements there have been discovered:—Erbium, Terbium, Samarium, Thullium, Holmium, Mosandrium, Phillipium, and several others. But their properties and combinations, owing to their extreme rarity, are very little known, and even their existence as independent substances[28] is doubtful.
It has been incontestably proved from observations on the spectra of the heavenly bodies that many of the commoner elements (such as H, Na, Mg, Fe) occur on the far distant stars. This fact confirms the belief that those forms of matter which appear on the earth as elements are widely distributed over the entire universe. But we do not yet know why, in nature, the mass of some elements should be greater than that of others.[28 bis]
The capacity of each element to combine with one or another element, and to form compounds with them which are in a greater or less degree prone to give new and yet more complex substances, forms the fundamental character of each element. Thus sulphur easily combines with the metals, oxygen, chlorine, or carbon, whilst gold and silver enter into combinations with difficulty, and form unstable compounds, which are easily decomposed by heat. The cause or force which induces the elements to enter into chemical change must be considered, as also the cause which holds different substances in combination—that is, which endues the substances formed with their particular degree of stability. This cause or force is called affinity (affinitas, affinité, Verwandtschaft), or chemical affinity.[29] Since this force must be regarded as exclusively an attractive force, like gravity, many writers (for instance, Bergmann at the end of the last, and Berthollet at the beginning of this, century) supposed affinity to be essentially similar to the universal force of gravity, from which it only differs in that the latter acts at observable distances whilst affinity only evinces itself at the smallest possible distances. But chemical affinity cannot be entirely identified with the universal attraction of gravity, which acts at appreciable distances and is dependent only on mass and distance, and not on the quality of the material on which it acts, whilst it is by the quality of matter that affinity is most forcibly influenced. Neither can it be entirely identified with cohesion, which gives to homogeneous solid substances their crystalline form, elasticity, hardness, ductility, and other properties, and to liquids their surface tension, drop formation, capillarity, and other properties, because affinity acts between the component parts of a substance and cohesion on a substance in its homogeneity, although both act at imperceptible distances (by contact) and have much in common. Chemical force, which makes one substance penetrate into another, cannot be entirely identified with even those attracting forces which make different substances adhere to each other, or hold together (as when two plane-polished surfaces of solid substances are brought into close contact), or which cause liquids to soak into solids, or adhere to their surfaces, or gases and vapours to condense on the surfaces of solids. These forces must not be confounded with chemical forces, which cause one substance to penetrate into the substance of another and to form a new substance, which is never the case with cohesion. But it is evident that the forces which determine cohesion form a connecting-link between mechanical and chemical forces, because they only act by intimate contact. For a long time, and especially during the first half of this century, chemical attraction and chemical forces were identified with electrical forces. There is certainly an intimate relation between them, for electricity is evolved in chemical reactions, and has also a powerful influence on chemical processes—for instance, compounds are decomposed by the action of an electrical current. And the exactly similar relation which exists between chemical phenomena and the phenomena of heat (heat being developed by chemical phenomena, and heat being able to decompose compounds) only proves the unity of the forces of nature, the capability of one force to produce and to be transformed into others. For this reason the identification of chemical force with electricity will not bear experimental proof.[30] As of all the (molecular) phenomena of nature which act on substances at immeasurably small distances, the phenomena of heat are at present the best (comparatively) known, having been reduced to the simplest fundamental principles of mechanics (of energy, equilibrium, and movement), which, since Newton, have been subjected to strict mathematical analysis, it is quite natural that an effort, which has been particularly pronounced during recent years, should have been made to bring chemical phenomena into strict correlation with the already investigated phenomena of heat, without, however, aiming at any identification of chemical with heat phenomena. The true nature of chemical force is still a secret to us, just as is the nature of the universal force of gravity, and yet without knowing what gravity really is, by applying mechanical conceptions, astronomical phenomena have been subjected not only to exact generalisation but to the detailed prediction of a number of particular facts; and so, also, although the true nature of chemical affinity may be unknown, there is reason to hope for considerable progress in chemical science by applying the laws of mechanics to chemical phenomena by means of the mechanical theory of heat. As yet this portion of chemistry has been but little worked at, and therefore, while forming a current problem of the science, it is treated more fully in that particular field which is termed either ‘theoretical’ or ‘physical’ chemistry, or, more correctly, chemical mechanics. As this province of chemistry requires a knowledge not only of the various homogeneous substances which have yet been obtained and of the chemical transformations which they undergo, but also of the phenomena (of heat and other kinds) by which these transformations are accompanied, it is only possible to enter on the study of chemical mechanics after an acquaintance with the fundamental chemical conceptions and substances which form the subject of this book.[31]
As the chemical changes to which substances are liable proceed from internal forces proper to these substances, as chemical phenomena certainly consist of motions of material parts (from the laws of the indestructibility of matter and of elements), and as the investigation of mechanical and physical phenomena proves the law of the indestructibility of forces, or the conservation of energy—that is, the possibility of the transformation of one kind of motion into another (of visible or mechanical into invisible or physical)—we are inevitably obliged to acknowledge the presence in substances (and especially in the elements of which all others are composed) of a store of chemical energy or invisible motion inducing them to enter into combinations. If heat be evolved in a reaction, it means that a portion of chemical energy is transformed into heat;[32] if heat be absorbed in a reaction,[33] that it is partly transformed (rendered latent) into chemical energy. The store of force or energy going to the formation of new compounds may, after several combinations, accomplished with an absorption of heat, at last diminish to such a degree that indifferent compounds will be obtained, although these sometimes, by combining with energetic elements or compounds, give more complex compounds, which may be capable of entering into chemical combination. Among elements, gold, platinum, and nitrogen have but little energy, whilst potassium, oxygen, and chlorine have a very marked degree of energy. When dissimilar substances enter into combination they often form substances of diminished energy. Thus sulphur and potassium when heated easily burn in air, but when combined together their compound is neither inflammable nor burns in air like its component parts. Part of the energy of the potassium and of the sulphur was evolved in their combination in the form of heat. Just as in the passage of substances from one physical state into another a portion of their store of heat is absorbed or evolved, so in combinations or decompositions and in every chemical process, there occurs a change in the store of chemical energy, and at the same time an evolution or absorption of heat.[34]
For the comprehension of chemical phenomena as mechanical processes—i.e., the study of the modus operandi of chemical phenomena—it is most important to consider: (1) the facts gathered from stoïchiometry, or that part of chemistry which treats of the quantitative relation, by weight or volume, of the reacting substances; (2) the distinction between the different forms and classes of chemical reactions; (3) the study of the changes in properties produced by alteration in composition; (4) the study of the phenomena which accompany chemical transformation; (5) a generalisation of the conditions under which reactions occur. As regards stoïchiometry, this branch of chemistry has been worked out most thoroughly, and comprises laws (of Dalton, Avogadro-Gerhardt, and others) which bear so deeply on all parts of chemistry that at the present time the chief problem of chemical research consists in the application of general stoïchiometrical laws to concrete examples, i.e., the quantitative (volumetric or gravimetric) composition of substances. All other branches of chemistry are clearly subordinate to this most important portion of chemical knowledge. Even the very signification of reactions of combination, decomposition, and rearrangement, acquired, as we shall see, a particular and new character under the influence of the progress of exact ideas concerning the quantitative relations of substances entering into chemical changes. Furthermore, in this sense there arose a new—and, till then, unknown—division of compound substances into definite and indefinite compounds. Even at the beginning of this century, Berthollet had not made this distinction. But Prout showed that a number of compounds contain the substances of which they are composed and into which they break up, in exact definite proportions by weight, which are unalterable under any conditions. Thus, for example, red mercury oxide always contains sixteen parts by weight of oxygen for every 200 parts by weight of mercury, which is expressed by the formula HgO. But in an alloy of copper and silver one or the other metal may be added at will, and in an aqueous solution of sugar, the relative proportion of the sugar and water may be altered and nevertheless a homogeneous whole with the sum of the independent properties will be obtained—i.e., in these cases there was indefinite chemical combination. Although in nature and chemical practice the formation of indefinite compounds (such as alloys and solutions) plays as essential a part as the formation of definite chemical compounds, yet, as the stoïchiometrical laws at present apply chiefly to the latter, all facts concerning indefinite compounds suffer from inexactitude, and it is only during recent years that the attention of chemists has been directed to this province of chemistry.
In chemical mechanics it is, from a qualitative point of view, very important to clearly distinguish at the very beginning between reversible and non-reversible reactions. Substances capable of reacting on each other at a certain temperature produce substances which at the same temperature either can or cannot give back the original substances. For example, salt dissolves in water at the ordinary temperature, and the solution so obtained is capable of breaking up at the same temperature, leaving salt and separating the water by evaporation. Carbon bisulphide is formed from sulphur and carbon at about the same temperature at which it can be resolved into sulphur and carbon. Iron, at a certain temperature, separates hydrogen from water, forming iron oxide, which, in contact with hydrogen at the same temperature, is able to produce iron and water. It is evident that if two substances, A and B, give two others C and D, and the reaction be reversible, then C and D will form A and B, and, consequently, by taking a definite mass of A and B, or a corresponding mass of C and D, we shall obtain, in each case, all four substances—that is to say, there will be a state of chemical equilibrium between the reacting substances. By increasing the mass of one of the substances we obtain a new condition of equilibrium, so that reversible reactions present a means of studying the influence of mass on the modus operandi of chemical changes. Many of those reactions which occur with very complicated compounds or mixtures may serve as examples of non-reversible reactions. Thus many of the compound substances of animal and vegetable organisms are broken up by heat, but cannot be re-formed from their products of decomposition at any temperature. Gunpowder, as a mixture of sulphur, nitre, and carbon, on being exploded, forms gases from which the original substances cannot be re-formed at any temperature. In order to obtain them, recourse must be had to an indirect method of combination at the moment of separation. If A does not under any circumstances combine directly with B, it does not follow that it cannot give a compound A B. For A can often combine with C and B with D, and if C has a great affinity for D, then the reaction of A C or B D produces not only C D, but also A B. As on the formation of C D, the substances A and B (previously in A C and B D) are left in a peculiar state of separation, it is supposed that their mutual combination occurs because they meet together in this nascent state at the moment of separation (in statu nascendi). Thus chlorine does not directly combine with charcoal, graphite, or diamond; there are, nevertheless, compounds of chlorine with carbon, and many of them are distinguished by their stability. They are obtained in the action of chlorine on hydrocarbons, as the separation products from the direct action of chlorine on hydrogen. Chlorine takes up the hydrogen, and the carbon liberated at the moment of its separation, enters into combination with another portion of the chlorine, so that in the end the chlorine is combined with both the hydrogen and the carbon.[35]
As regards those phenomena which accompany chemical action, the most important circumstance in reference to chemical mechanics is that not only do chemical processes produce a mechanical displacement (a motion of particles), heat, light, electrical potential and current; but that all these agents are themselves capable of changing and governing chemical transformations. This reciprocity or reversibility naturally depends on the fact that all the phenomena of nature are only different kinds and forms of visible and invisible (molecular) motions. First sound, and then light, was shown to consist of vibratory motions, as the laws of physics have proved and developed beyond a doubt. The connection between heat and mechanical motion and work has ceased to be a supposition, but has become an accepted fact, and the mechanical equivalent of heat (425 kilogrammetres of mechanical work correspond with one kilogram unit of heat or Calorie) gives a mechanical measure for thermal phenomena. Although the mechanical theory of electrical phenomena cannot be considered so fully developed as the theory of heat, both statical and dynamical electricity are produced by mechanical means (in common electrical machines or in Gramme or other dynamos), and conversely, a current (in electric motors) can produce mechanical motion. Thus by connecting a current with the poles of a Gramme dynamo it may be made to revolve, and, conversely, by rotating it an electrical current is produced, which demonstrates the reversibility of electricity into mechanical motion. Accordingly chemical mechanics must look for the fundamental lines of its advancement in the correlation of chemical with physical and mechanical phenomena. But this subject, owing to its complexity and comparative novelty, has not yet been expressed by a harmonious theory, or even by a satisfactory hypothesis, and therefore we shall avoid lingering over it.
A chemical change in a certain direction is accomplished not only by reason of the difference of masses, the composition of the substances concerned, the distribution of their parts, and their affinity or chemical energy, but also by reason of the conditions under which the substances occur. In order that a certain chemical reaction may take place between substances which are capable of reacting on each other, it is often necessary to have recourse to conditions which are sometimes very different from those in which the substances usually occur in nature. For example, not only is the presence of air (oxygen) necessary for the combustion of charcoal, but the latter must also be heated to redness. The red-hot portion of the charcoal burns—i.e. combines with the oxygen of the atmosphere—and in so doing evolves heat, which raises the temperature of the adjacent parts of charcoal, so that they burn. Just as the combustion of charcoal is dependent on its being heated to redness, so also every chemical reaction only takes place under certain physical, mechanical, or other conditions. The following are the chief conditions which exert an influence on the progress of chemical reactions.
(a) Temperature.—Chemical reactions of combination only take place within certain definite limits of temperature, and cannot be accomplished outside these limits. We may cite as examples not only that the combustion of charcoal begins at a red heat, but also that chlorine and salt only combine with water at a temperature below 0°. These compounds cannot be formed at a higher temperature, for they are then wholly or partially broken up into their component parts. A certain rise in temperature is necessary to start combustion. In certain cases the effect of this rise may be explained as causing one of the reacting bodies to change from a solid into a liquid or gaseous form. The transference into a fluid form facilitates the progress of the reaction, because it aids the intimate contact of the particles reacting on each other. Another reason, and to this must be ascribed the chief influence of heat in exciting chemical action, is that the physical cohesion, or the internal chemical union, of homogeneous particles is thereby weakened, and in this way the separation of the particles of the original substances, and their transference into new compounds, is rendered easier. When a reaction absorbs heat—as in decomposition—the reason why heat is necessary is self-evident.