The Boy's Playbook of Science / Including the Various Manipulations and Arrangements of Chemical and Philosophical Apparatus Required for the Successful Performance of Scientific Experiments in Illustration of the Elementary Branches of Chemistry and Natural Philosophy

by John Henry Pepper

If a lighted taper is plunged into a bottle of chlorine it continues to burn, emitting an enormous quantity of smoke, for the reason already explained, and demonstrating the perfection of the atmosphere in which we live and breathe, and showing that had oxygen gas possessed the same properties as chlorine, the combustion of compounds of hydrogen and carbon would have been impossible, in consequence of the enormous quantity of soot which would have been produced, so that some other element that would freely enter into combination with it must have been provided to produce both artificial light and heat. Chlorine is a gas which cannot be inhaled, and ozone presents the same features, as a mouse confined for a short time with an excess of ozone soon died; but ozone is the extraordinary condition of oxygen; the element in the ordinary state is harmless, and is the one which enters so largely into the composition of the air we breathe.

Eleventh Experiment.

When one volume of olefiant gas (prepared by boiling one measure of alcohol and three of sulphuric acid) is mixed with two volumes of chlorine, and the two gases agitated together in a long glass vessel for a few seconds, with a glass plate over the top, which should have a welt ground perfectly flat, they unite on the application of flame, with the production of a great cloud of black smoke, arising from the deposited carbon, whilst a sort of roaring noise is heard during the time that the flame passes from the top to the foot of the glass. (Fig. 134.)

Fig. 134.

Remarkable deposition of carbon during the combustion of one volume of olefiant gas with two of chlorine.

Twelfth Experiment.

Formerly Bandannah handkerchiefs were in the highest estimation, and no gentleman's toilet was thought complete without one. The pattern was of the simplest kind, consisting only of white spots on a red or other coloured ground. These spots were produced in a very ingenious manner by Messrs. Monteith, of Glasgow, by pressing together many layers of silk with leaden plates perforated with holes; a solution of chlorine was then poured upon the upper plate, and pressure being applied it penetrated the whole mass in the direction of the holes, bleaching out the colour in its passage. This important commercial result may be imitated on the small scale by placing a piece of calico dyed with Turkey red between two thick pieces of board, each of which is perforated with a hole two inches in diameter, and corresponding accurately when one is placed upon the other. The pieces of board may be squeezed together in any convenient way, either by weights, strong vulcanized india-rubber bands or screws, and when a strong solution of chlorine gas or of chloride of lime is poured into the hole and percolates through the cloth, the colour is removed, and the part is bleached almost instantaneously by first wetting the calico with a little weak acid, and then pouring on the solution of chloride of lime. On removing and washing the folded red calico it is found to be bleached in all the places exposed to the solution, and is now covered with white spots. (Fig. 135.)

Fig. 135.