Abstract
IN reply to C. A. M.'s letter of last week I would make the following remarks:—Ice is not an exceptional substance, for mercuric chloride has also given experimentally the same results, and though I have not yet had the opportunity of submitting other substances to the same conditions, yet I conclude from other experiments that all the bodies which I have so far investigated, and which are of the most varied description, will also exhibit the same phenomenon. As I have not yet published my detailed results, I do not wish at present to enter more fully into the subject, but I may say that the influence of pressure in the present case is not of the same kind as that referred to by C. A. M. as occurring in the text-book named, for the following amongst other reasons. From Prof. Thompson's prediction and Sir Win. Thomson's experiments it resulted that the melting-point of ice is lowered by pressure, and lowered in proportion to the pressure, whereas in my experiments, at any rate so far as I have at present seen, we do not vary the melting-point by diminishing the pressure, but we prevent the substance from melting at all. If the pressure be increased even but slightly above the critical pressure, the ice melts at its ordinary melting-point. The influence of pressure in this case is not one of degree varying with the amount by which the pressure is reduced. The two cases are, I consider, entirely different, and are not contradictions. Similar remarks would probably apply to paraffin and spermaceti, though these are bodies which have not come within the range of my experiments.
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CARNELLEY, T. Ice under Pressure. Nature 22, 583 (1880). https://doi.org/10.1038/022583e0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/022583e0
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