I have here a bottle containing ammonia. Ammonia is a gas which you can recognize by its smell. Its molecules have a velocity of six hundred metres per second, so that, if their course had not been interrupted by striking against the molecules of air in the hall, every one in the most distant gallery would have smelt ammonia before I was able to pronounce the name of the gas. But, instead of this, each molecule of ammonia is so jostled about by the molecules of air, that it is sometimes going one way and sometimes another. It is like a hare which is always doubling, and, though it goes a great pace, it makes very little progress. Nevertheless, the smell of ammonia is now beginning to be perceptible at some distance from the bottle. The gas does diffuse itself through the air, though the process is a slow one, and, if we could close up every opening of this hall so as to make it air-tight, and leave every thing to itself for some weeks, the ammonia would become uniformly mixed through every part of the air in the hall.
This property of gases, that they diffuse through each other, was first remarked by Priestley. Dalton showed that it takes place quite independently of any chemical action between the inter-diffusing gases. Graham, whose researches were especially directed toward those phenomena which seem to throw light on molecular motions, made a careful study of diffusion, and obtained the first results from which the rate of diffusion can be calculated.
Still more recently, the rates of diffusion of gases into each other have been measured with great precision by Prof. Loschmidt, of Vienna.
He placed the two gases in two similar vertical tubes, the lighter gas being placed above the heavier, so as to avoid the formation of currents. He then opened a sliding-valve, so as to make the two tubes into one, and, after leaving the gases to themselves for an hour or so, he shut the valve, and determined how much of each gas had diffused into the other.
As most gases are invisible, I shall exhibit gaseous diffusion to you by means of two gases, ammonia and hydrochloric acid, which, when they meet, form a solid product. The ammonia, being the lighter gas, is placed above the hydrochloric acid, with a stratum of air between, but you will soon see that the gases can diffuse through this stratum of air, and produce a cloud of white smoke when they meet. During the whole of this process, no currents or any other visible motion can be detected. Every part of the vessel appears as calm as a jar of undisturbed air.
But, according to our theory, the same kind of motion is going on in calm air as in the inter-diffusing gases, the only difference being that we can trace the molecules from one place to another more easily when they are of a different nature from those through which they are diffusing.
