Читать книгу Inventors at Work, with Chapters on Discovery - George Iles - Страница 80

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By virtue, also, of its minuteness the molecule as a reservoir of energy can far excel a mass of visible dimensions. Let us compare two rotating spheres, one of them of seven times the radius of the other. We spin both at the same peripheral rate, and gradually increase this speed: which will be the first to break apart under centrifugal strain? The larger, and why? Because the cohesion of a sphere is in proportion to the area of its great circle, which varies as the square of its diameter, while centrifugal strain under swift rotation varies as the cube of that diameter, or as the volume of the sphere. From this it follows that we may safely spin our small sphere with a circumferential velocity seven times that given the large sphere; therefore as containers of energy small spheres are more effective than large, and this inversely as their diameters. Spheres, or bodies of any other form, if reduced in dimensions to ¹⁄_760,000,000th, would as reservoirs of energy gain 760,000,000-fold. Thus we open a door of explanation regarding the stupendous contrast between chemical energy and mechanical work. Chemical processes are exerted by molecules and atoms, mechanical work takes place among masses comparatively enormous in bulk. It may require a hundred blows from a ponderous steam hammer to raise the temperature of an iron bar ten degrees; that bar melts in ten seconds when plunged into a flame produced by a few ounces of hydrogen and oxygen gases.

Recent experiments by Professor Joseph J. Thomson point to the probability that the atom of the chemist while a unit, is in part built of electrons each but one-thousandth part the size of a hydrogen atom. An electron, by virtue of its infinitesimal minuteness, becomes able to hold proportionately much more energy than is possible to an atom moving as a whole. This brings us to some comprehension of the astonishing powers of radium, an element which maintains itself at a temperature 3° to 5° Centigrade higher than that of its surroundings, probably through the collision within each atom of its component parts.