Note 47 — Chapter I · ON WATER AND ITS COMPOUNDS

If the substance dissolved is non-volatile (like salt or sugar), or only slightly volatile, then the whole of the tension of the vapour given off is due to the water, but if a solution of a volatile substance—for instance, a gas or a volatile liquid—evaporates, then only a portion of the pressure belongs to the water, and the whole pressure observed consists of the sum of the pressures of the vapours of the water and of the substance dissolved. The majority of researches bear on the first case, which will be spoken of presently, and the observations of D. P. Konovaloff (1881) refer to the second case. He showed that in the case of two volatile liquids, mutually soluble in each other, forming two layers of saturated solutions (for example, ether and water, Note 20, p. 67), both solutions have an equal vapour tension (in the case in point the tension of both is equal to 431 mm. of mercury at 19·8°). Further, he found that for solutions which are formed in all proportions, the tension is either greater (solutions of alcohol and water) or less (solutions of formic acid) than that which answers to the rectilinear change (proportional to the composition) from the tension of water to the tension of the substance dissolved; thus, the tension, for example, of a 70 p.c. solution of formic acid is less, at all temperatures, than the tension of water and of formic acid itself. In this case the tension of a solution is never equal to the sum of the tensions of the dissolving liquids, as Regnault already showed when he distinguished this case from that in which a mixture of liquids, which are insoluble in each other, evaporates. From this it is evident that a mutual action occurs in solution, which diminishes the vapour tensions proper to the individual substances, as would be expected on the supposition of the formation of compounds in solutions, because the elasticity then always diminishes.