Page:Various Forces of Matter.djvu/86

amount of this new power at our disposal. Here you see it is [causing the ends of the wires to touch]—that is the electric light we used yesterday, and by means of these wires we can cause water to submit itself to this power; for the moment I put them into metallic connection (at a and b) you see the water boiling in that little vessel (c), and you hear the bubbling of the gas that is going through the tube (d). See how I am converting the water into vapour, and if I take a little vessel (e), and fill it with water, and put it in the trough over the end of the tube (d), there goes the vapour ascending into the vessel. And yet that is not steam, for you know that if steam is brought near cold water, it would at once condense, and return back again to water; this then cannot be steam, for it is bubbling through the cold water in this trough, but it is a vaporous substance, and we must therefore examine it carefully, to see in what way the water has been changed. And now, in order to give you a proof that it is not steam, I am going to show you that it is combustible, for if I take this small vessel to a light, the vapour inside explodes in a manner that steam could never do.