Problems of nature - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897 Excerpt: ... 238 XXXII.--ON THE DIFFERENT STATES OF AGGREGATION OF MATTER. (1885.) LIFE is motion. Inertia is death. Whoever seeks to understand life must be acquainted with the motions of matter, without which the mass is dead--a moles. The acknowledged scientific view--theoretical, indeed, but harmonizing with the facts--is that all substances are in the first place composed of homogeneous particles, termed molecules, each being capable of movements, which are called molecular movements. These movements are diverse, and take place in all bodies, even in such as are fixed and apparently motionless; among the best-known instances are the expansion and contraction of wood and iron, through changes in the temperature. In connection with these molecular movements, it will be sufficient for our purpose to establish the following rule: the movement of the molecules in matter may be active or weak, the degree of activity representing the vital force of matter (a question of the first importance in the study of life), while matter without molecular movement is an inanimate moles. The impossibility of movement without space is a primary induction from the well-known fact, that matter of which the molecular movement has been enhanced by heating (heat is molecular movement) demands, with elementary force, increased space; as also that heated matter possesses greater power than similar matter in a cold condition. Let us take water as an example. If we heat it, we see its internal movement When Crookes and Hittorf discovered the so-called radiant matter, we became aware that high dilutions of gases by no means extinguish the physical forces of matter, but that, under certain circumstances, the converse takes place. Professor Rontgen's astonishing results, in connection with Crook...