Clowes has shown that it has a wider range of explosive proportions when mixed with air than any of the other combustible gases, the limiting percentages being as follows: - Acetylene .
The liquid when soaked into a porous combustible substance like blotting-paper burns rapidly and quietly, and when struck with a hammer on a hard surface violently detonates; when a little of the liquid is spread on an anvil and struck, the portion immediately under the hammer only will, as a rule, detonate, the remainder being scattered.
Knowing that the water produced by the combustion of alcohol was not pre-existent in that substance but was formed by the combination of its hydrogen with the oxygen of the air, he burnt alcohol and other combustible organic substances, such as wax and oil, in a known volume of oxygen, and, from the weight of the water and carbon dioxide produced and his knowledge of their composition, was able to calculate the amounts of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen present in the substance.
To obtain a good reducing flame (in which the combustible matter, very hot, but not yet burned, is disposed to take oxygen from any compound containing it), the nozzle, with smaller orifice, should just touch the flame at a point higher above the wick, and a somewhat weaker current of air should be blown.
After having previously roasted the tube and copper oxide, and reduced the copper spiral a, the weighed calcium chloride tube and potash bulbs are put in position, the boat containing the substance is inserted (in the case of a difficultly combustible substance it is desirable to mix it with cupric oxide or lead chromate), the copper spiral (d) replaced, and the air and oxygen supply connected up. The apparatus is then tested for leaks.
P. 105) the stratified character of the ash may be rendered apparent in an X-ray photograph of a piece of coal about an inch thick, when it appears in thin parallel bands, the combustible portion remaining transparent.
The views of Becher on the composition of substances mark little essential advance on those of the two preceding centuries, and the three elements or principles of salt, mercury and sulphur reappear as the vitrifiable, the mercurial and the combustible earths.
Casciorolus, a shoemaker of Bologna, who found that after ignition with combustible substances it became phosphorescent, and on this account it was frequently called Bolognian phosphorus.
The following analysis gives a fair idea of the composition of an average sample of gas made from coal, purified but without enrichment: Ioo 00 These constituents may be divided into - (a) light-yielding hydrocarbons, (b) combustible diluents and (c) impurities.
Are thus enumerated: (1) any premises in such a state as to be a nuisance or injurious to health; (2) any pool, ditch, gutter, watercourse, privy, urinal, cesspool, drain or ashpit so foul or in such a state as to be injurious to health; (3) any animal so kept as to be a nuisance or injurious to health; (4) any accumulation or deposit which is a nuisance or injurious to health; (5) any house or part of a house so overcrowded as to be dangerous or injurious to the health of the inmates, whether or not members of the same family; (6) any factory, workshop or workplace not already under the operation of any general act for the regulation of factories or bakehouses not kept in a cleanly state or not ventilated in such a manner as to render harmless as far as practicable any gases, vapours, dust or other impurities generated in the course of the work carried on therein that are a nuisance or injurious to health, or so overcrowded while work is carried on as to be dangerous or injurious to the health of those employed therein; (7) any fireplace or furnace which does not as far as practicable consume the smoke arising from the combustible used therein, and which is used for working engines by steam or in any mill, factory, dye-house, brewery, bakehouse or gas work, or in any manufacturing or trade process whatsoever; and (8) any chimney not being the chimney of a private dwelling-house sending forth black smoke in such quantity as to be a nuisance.