Note 29 — Chapter III · OXYGEN AND THE CHIEF ASPECTS OF ITS SALINE COMBINATIONS

The experiment may be conducted without the wires, if the hydrogen be lighted in the orifice of an inverted cylinder, and at the same time the cylinder be brought over the end of a gas-conducting tube connected with a gas-holder containing oxygen. Thomsen's method may be adopted for a lecture experiment. Two glass tubes, with platinum ends, are passed through orifices, about 1–1½ centimetre apart, in a cork. One tube is connected with a gas-holder containing oxygen, and the other with a gas-holder full of hydrogen. Having turned on the gases, the hydrogen is lighted, and a common lamp glass, tapering towards the top, is placed over the cork. The hydrogen continues to burn inside the lamp glass, at the expense of the oxygen. If the current of oxygen be then decreased little by little, a point is reached when, owing to the insufficient supply of oxygen, the flame of the hydrogen increases in size, disappears for several moments, and then reappears at the tube supplying the oxygen. If the flow of oxygen be again increased, the flame reappears at the hydrogen tube. Thus the flame may be made to appear at one or the other tube at will, only the increase or decrease of the current of gas must take place by degrees and not suddenly. Further, air may be taken instead of oxygen, and ordinary coal-gas instead of hydrogen, and it will then be shown how air burns in an atmosphere of coal-gas, and it can easily be proved that the lamp glass is full of a gas combustible in air, because it may be lighted at the top.