“A few months ago I visited Hazard’s powder mills, in Enfield, Connecticut, and there learned how gunpowder is made. The charcoal, the sulphur, and the nitre are first finely pulverized, then ground together for hours till thoroughly mixed, and afterward pressed together. This mass is then broken into grains and the grains polished. But though these elements are brought into so close contact, yet they do not combine and explode till heat is applied. The same is true of the combustion of wood and coal. The carbon and the hydrogen of the fuel are constantly surrounded with the oxygen of the air, but they do not take fire and burn, that is, they do not combine with the oxygen, till they are raised to a red heat, or perhaps even to a higher temperature. If a stove filled with burning coal be cooled down to a low temperature by applying ice, the combustion will cease, the fire will go out. Our teacher at the academy on one occasion heated a steel watch-spring red hot and plunged it into a jar of oxygen, and the steel spring began quickly to burn with great fury.”
“You have given us good illustrations, Samuel, and that which is true of carbon and hydrogen and oxygen is true of substances in general. The effect of heat in producing chemical changes is very important everywhere. It is seen not only in the chemist’s laboratory and in the artisan’s shop, but also in the laboratory of Nature. Plant a grain of corn in midwinter: why does it not germinate and grow? Nothing is needed but the requisite heat to quicken the chemical affinities into action. Earth and air furnish the needed material for the growth of forest trees in winter as well as in summer, but the cold holds in check the chemical forces and prevents the requisite chemical combinations. No sooner does the sun quicken that atomic vibration or revolution which we call heat than vegetable growth begins. Heat is necessary for those chemical changes by which food is digested in the stomach and the processes of nutrition carried on in every part of the body. If a man finish his dinner with ice cream or ice water, the process of digestion is delayed till the contents of the stomach recover their proper temperature. This is one chief reason why warm, comfortable clothing is so very important, especially for children. All the vital processes are chemical processes: they are carried on through chemical affinities. Unless the body be kept at a suitable temperature, these processes are feeble and imperfect, nutrition and vital combustion are hindered, and diseases are engendered.
“These, then, are the chief effects of heat. It expands bodies, weakens cohesive attraction, and quickens the chemical affinities into activity.”
Ansel again raised his hand.
“What do you wish?”
“Will you please tell us, Mr. Wilton, how this weakening of cohesive attraction is explained upon the dynamic theory of heat?”
“I will do so with pleasure. The increased atomic motion in the heated body throws the atoms farther apart, as we have already learned, and by this increase of distance their attraction is diminished. If the earth were twice its present distance from the sun, their attraction for each other would be four times less than it now is; if its distance were three times as great, their attraction for each other would be nine times less. The attraction of gravitation diminishes in proportion as the square of the distance through which it must act increases. Perhaps cohesive attraction diminishes according to the same law, though the spaces are so small that this cannot be demonstrated, but it is certainly weakened by the expansion of bodies through the agency of heat.”
Here Peter raised his hand.
“What will you say, Peter?”
“Do not men heat and burn bricks, not to soften them, but to harden them?”