The Chemical History of a Candle

Lecture III.—Products: Water from the Combustion—Nature of Water—A Compound—Hydrogen

I DARE say you well remember that when we parted we had just mentioned the word “products” from the candle; for when a candle burns we found we were able, by nice adjustment, to get various products from it. There was one substance which was not obtained when the candle was burning properly, which was charcoal or smoke, and there was some other substance that went upward from the flame which did not appear as smoke, but took some other form, and made part of that general current which, ascending from the candle upward, becomes invisible, and escapes. There were also other products to mention. You remember that in that rising current having its origin at the candle we found that one part was condensable against a cold spoon, or against a clean plate, or any other cold thing, and another part was incondensable.

We will first take the condensable part, and examine it, and, strange to say, we find that that part of the product is just water—nothing but water. On the last occasion I spoke of it incidentally, merely saying that water was produced among the condensable products of the candle; but to-day I wish to draw your attention to water, that we may examine it carefully, especially in relation to this subject, and also with respect to its general existence on the surface of the globe.

Now, having previously arranged an experiment for the purpose of condensing water from the products of the candle, my next point will be to show you this water; and perhaps one of the best means that I can adopt for showing its presence to so many at once is to exhibit a very visible action of water and then to apply that test to what is collected as a drop at the bottom of that vessel. I have here a chemical substance, discovered by Sir Humphry Davy, which has a very energetic action upon water, which I shall use as a test of the presence of water. If I take a little piece of it—it is called potassium, as coming from potash—if I take a little piece of it, and throw it into the basin, you see how it shows the presence of water by lighting up and floating about, burning with a violet flame. I am now going to take away the candle which has been burning beneath the vessel containing ice and salt, and you see a drop of water—a condensed product of the candle—hanging from the under surface of the dish (FIG. 65). I will show you that potassium has the same action upon it as upon the water in that basin in the experiment we have just tried. See! it takes fire, and burns in just the same manner. I will take another drop upon this glass slab, and when I put the potassium on to it, you see at once, from its taking fire, that there is water present. Now that water was produced by the candle. In the same manner, if I put this spirit lamp under that jar, you will soon see the latter become damp from the dew which is deposited upon it—that dew being the result of combustion; and I have no doubt you will shortly see, by the drops of water which fall upon the paper below, that there is a good deal of water produced from the combustion of the lamp. I will let it remain, and you can afterward see how much water has been collected. So, if I take a gas lamp, and put any cooling arrangement over it, I shall get water—water being likewise produced from the combustion of gas. Here, in this bottle, is a quantity of water—perfectly pure, distilled water, produced from the combustion of a gas lamp—in no point different from the water that you distill from the river, or ocean, or spring, but exactly the same thing. Water is one individual thing; it never changes. We can add to it by careful adjustment for a little while, or we can take it apart and get other things from it; but water, as water, remains always the same, either in a solid, liquid, or fluid state. Here again [holding another bottle] is some water produced by the combustion of an oil lamp. A pint of oil, when burnt fairly and properly, produces rather more than a pint of water. Here, again, is some water, produced by a rather long experiment, from a wax candle. And so we can go on with almost all combustible substances, and find that if they burn with a flame, as a candle, they produce water. You may make these experiments yourselves: the head of a poker is a very good thing to try with, and if it remains cold long enough over the candle, you may get water condensed in drops on it; or a spoon, or ladle, or any thing else may be used, provided it be clean, and can carry off the heat, and so condense the water.

And now—to go into the history of this wonderful production of water from combustibles, and by combustion—I must first of all tell you that this water may exist in different conditions; and although you may now be acquainted with all its forms, they still require us to give a little attention to them for the present; so that we may perceive how the water, while it goes through its Protean changes, is entirely and absolutely the same thing, whether it is produced from a candle, by combustion, or from the rivers or ocean.

First of all, water, when at the coldest, is ice. Now we philosophers—I hope that I may class you and myself together in this case—speak of water as water, whether it be in its solid, or liquid, or gaseous state—we speak of it chemically as water. Water is a thing compounded of two substances, one of which we have derived from the candle, and the other we shall find elsewhere. Water may occur as ice; and you have had most excellent opportunities lately of seeing this. Ice changes back into water—for we had on our last Sabbath a strong instance of this change by the sad catastrophe which occurred in our own house, as well as in the houses of many of our friends—ice changes back into water when the temperature is raised; water also changes into steam when it is warmed enough. The water which we have here before us is in its densest state (); and, although it changes in weight, in condition, in form, and in many other qualities, it still is water; and whether we alter it into ice by cooling, or whether we change it into steam by heat, it increases in volume—in the one case very strangely and powerfully, and in the other case very largely and wonderfully. For instance, I will now take this tin cylinder, and pour a little water into it, and, seeing how much water I pour in, you may easily estimate for yourselves how high it will rise in the vessel: it will cover the bottom about two inches. I am now about to convert the water into steam for the purpose of showing to you the different volumes which water occupies in its different states of water and steam.

Let us now take the case of water changing into ice: we can effect that by cooling it in a mixture of salt and pounded ice ()—and I shall do so to show you to the expansion of water into a thing of larger bulk when it is so changed. These bottles [holding one] are made strong cast iron, very strong and very thick—I suppose they are the third of an inch in thickness; they are very carefully filled with water, so as to exclude all air, and then they are screwed down tight. We shall see that when we freeze the water in these iron vessels, they will not be able to hold the ice, and the expansion within them will break them in pieces as these [pointing to some fragments] are broken, which have been bottles of exactly the same kind. I am about to put these two bottles into that mixture of ice and salt for the purpose of showing that when water becomes ice it changes in volume in this extraordinary way.

In the mean time, look at the change which has taken place in the water to which we have applied heat; it is losing its fluid state. You may tell this by two or three circumstances. I have covered the mouth of this glass flask, in which water is boiling, with a watch-glass. Do you see what happens? It rattles away like a valve chattering, because the steam rising from the boiling water sends the valve up and down, and forces itself out, and so makes it clatter. You can very easily perceive that the flask is quite full of steam, or else it would not force its way out. You see, also, that the flask contains a substance very much larger than the water, for it fills the whole of the flask over and over again, and there it is blowing away into the air; and yet you can not observe any great diminution in the bulk of the water, which shows you that its change of bulk is very great when it becomes steam.

I have put our iron bottles containing water into this freezing mixture, that you may see what happens. No communication will take place, you observe, between the water in the bottles and the ice in the outer vessel. But there will be a conveyance of heat from the one to the other, and if we are successful—we are making our experiment in very great haste—I expect you will by-and-by, so soon as the cold has taken possession of the bottles and their contents, hear a pop on the occasion of the bursting of the one bottle or the other, and, when we come to examine the bottles, we shall find their contents masses of ice, partly inclosed by the covering of iron which is too small for them, because the ice is larger in bulk than the water. You know very well that ice floats upon water; if a boy falls through a hole into the water, he tries to get on the ice again to float him up. Why does the ice float? Think of that, and philosophize. Because the ice is larger than the quantity of water which can produce it, and therefore the ice weighs the lighter and the water is the heavier.

To return now to the action of heat on water. See what a stream of vapor is issuing from this tin vessel! You observe, we must have made it quite full of steam to have it sent out in that great quantity. And now, as we can convert the water into steam by heat, we convert it back into liquid water by the application of cold. And if we take a glass, or any other cold thing, and hold it over this steam, see how soon it gets damp with water: it will condense it until the glass is warm—it condenses the water which is now running down the sides of it. I have here another experiment to show the condensation of water from a vaporous state back into a liquid state, in the same way as the vapor, one of the products of the candle, was condensed against the bottom of the dish and obtained in the form of water; and to show you how truly and thoroughly these changes take place, I will take this tin flask, which is now full of steam, and close the top. We shall see what takes place when we cause this water or steam to return back to the fluid state by pouring some cold water on the outside. [The lecturer poured the cold water over the vessel, when it immediately collapsed (FIG. 66).] You see what has happened. If I had closed the stopper, and still kept the heat applied to it, it would have burst the vessel; yet, when the steam returns to the state of water, the vessel collapses, there being a vacuum produced inside by the condensation of the steam. I show you these experiments for the purpose of pointing out that in all these occurrences there is nothing that changes the water into any other thing; it still remains water; and so the vessel is obliged to give way, and is crushed inward, as in the other case, by the farther application of heat, it would have been blown outward.

And what do you think the bulk of that water is when it assumes the vaporous condition? You see that cube [pointing to a cubic foot]. There, by its side, is a cubic inch (FIG. 67), exactly the same shape as the cubic foot, and that bulk of water [the cubic inch] is sufficient to expand into that bulk [the cubic foot] of steam; and, on the contrary, the application of cold will contract that large quantity of steam into this small quantity of water. [One of the iron bottles burst at that moment.] Ah! There is one of our bottles burst, and here, you see, is a crack down one side an eighth of an inch in width. [The other now exploded, sending the freezing mixture in all directions.] This other bottle is also broken; although the iron was nearly half an inch thick, the ice has burst it asunder. These changes always take place in water; they do not require to be always produced by artificial means; we only use them here because we want to produce a small winter round that little bottle instead of a long and severe one. But if you go to Canada, or to the North, you will find the temperature there out of doors will do the same thing as has been done here by the freezing mixture.

To return to our quiet philosophy. We shall not in future be deceived, therefore, by any changes that are produced in water. Water is the same every where, whether produced from the ocean or from the flame of the candle. Where, then, is this water which we get from a candle? I must anticipate a little, and tell you. It evidently comes, as to part of it, from the candle, but is it within the candle beforehand? No, it is not in the candle; and it is not in the air around about the candle which is necessary for its combustion. It is neither in one nor the other, but it comes from their conjoint action, a part from the candle, a part from the air; and this we have now to trace, so that we may understand thoroughly what is the chemical history of a candle when we have it burning on our table. How shall we get at this? I myself know plenty of ways, but I want you to get at it from the association in your own minds of what I have already told you.

I think you can see a little in this way. We had just now the case of a substance which acted upon the water in the way that Sir Humphry Davy showed us (), and which I am now going to recall to your minds by making again an experiment upon that dish. It is a thing which we have to handle very carefully; for you see, if I allow a little splash of water to come upon this mass, it sets fire to part of it; and if there were free access of air, it would quickly set fire to the whole. Now this is a metal—a beautiful and bright metal—which rapidly changes in the air, and, as you know, rapidly changes in water. I will put a piece on the water, and you see it burns beautifully, making a floating lamp, using the water in the place of air. Again, if we take a few iron filings or turnings and put them in water, we find that they likewise undergo an alteration. They do not change so much as this potassium does, but they change somewhat in the same way; they become rusty, and show an action upon the water, though in a different degree of intensity to what this beautiful metal does; but they act upon the water in the same manner generally as this potassium. I want you to put these different facts together in your minds. I have another metal here [zinc], and when we examined it with regard to the solid substance produced by its combustion, we had an opportunity of seeing that it burned; and I suppose, if I take a little strip of this zinc and put it over the candle, you will see something half way, as it were, between the combustion of potassium on the water and the action of iron—you see there is a sort of combustion. It has burned, leaving a white ash or residuum; and here also we find that the metal has a certain amount of action upon water.

By degrees we have learned how to modify the action of these different substances, and to make them tell us what we want to know. And now, first of all, I take iron. It is a common thing in all chemical reactions, where we get any result of this kind, to find that it is increased by the action of heat; and if we want to examine minutely and carefully the action of bodies one upon another, we often have to refer to the action of heat. You are aware, I believe, that iron filings burn beautifully in the air; but I am about to show you an experiment of this kind, because it will impress upon you what I am going to say about iron in its action on water. If I take a flame and make it hollow—you know why, because I want to get air to it and into it, and therefore I make it hollow—and then take a few iron filings and drop them into the flame, you see how well they burn. That combustion results from the chemical action which is going on when we ignite those particles. And so we proceed to consider these different effects, and ascertain what iron will do when it meets with water. It will tell us the story so beautifully, so gradually and regularly, that I think it will please you very much.

I have here a furnace with a pipe going through it like an iron gun barrel (FIG. 68), and I have stuffed that barrel full of bright iron turnings, and placed it across the fire to be made red-hot. We can either send air through the barrel to come in contact with the iron, or we can send steam from this little boiler at the end of the barrel. Here is a stop-cock which shuts off the steam from the barrel until we wish to admit it. There is some water in these glass jars, which I have colored blue, so that you may see what happens. Now you know very well that any steam I might send through that barrel, if it went through into the water, would be condensed; for you have seen that steam can not retain its gaseous form if it be cooled down; you saw it here [pointing to the tin flask] crushing itself into a small bulk, and causing the flask holding it to collapse; so that if I were to send steam through that barrel it would be condensed, supposing the barrel were cold; it is, therefore, heated to perform the experiment I am now about to show you. I am going to send the steam through the barrel in small quantities, and you shall judge for yourselves, when you see it issue from the other end, whether it still remains steam. Steam is condensible into water, and when you lower the temperature of steam you convert it back into fluid water; but I have lowered the temperature of the gas which I have collected in this jar by passing it through water after it has traversed the iron barrel, and still it does not change back into water. I will take another test and apply to this gas. (I hold the jar in an inverted position, or my substance would escape.) If I now apply a light to the mouth of the jar, it ignites with a slight noise. That tells you that it is not steam; steam puts out a fire; it does not burn; but you saw that what I had in that jar burnt. We may obtain this substance equally from water produced from the candle flame as from any other source. When it is obtained by the action of the iron upon the aqueous vapor, it leaves the iron in a state very similar to that in which these filings were after they were burnt. It makes the iron heavier than it was before. So long as the iron remains in the tube and is heated, and is cooled again without the access of air or water, it does not change in its weight; but after having had this current of steam passed over it, it then comes out heavier than it was before, having taken something out of the steam, and having allowed something else to pass forth, which we see here. And now, as we have another jar full, I will show you something most interesting. It is a combustible gas; and I might at once take this jar and set fire to the contents, and show you that it is combustible; but I intend to show you more, if I can. It is also a very light substance. Steam will condense; this body will rise in the air, and not condense. Suppose I take another glass jar, empty of all but air: if I examine it with a taper I shall find that it contains nothing but air. I will now take this jar full of the gas that I am speaking of, and deal with it as though it were a light body; I will hold both upside down, and turn the one up under the other (FIG. 69); and that which did contain the gas procured from the steam, what does it contain now? You will find it now only contains air. But look! Here is the combustible substance [taking the other jar] which I have poured out of the one jar into the other. It still preserves its quality, and condition, and independence, and therefore is the more worthy of our consideration, as belonging to the products of a candle.

Now this substance which we have just prepared by the action of iron on the steam or water, we can also get by means of those other things which you have already seen act so well upon the water. If I take a piece of potassium, and make the necessary arrangements, it will produce this gas; and if, instead, a piece of zinc, I find, when I come to examine it very carefully, that the main reason why this zinc can not act upon the water continuously as the other metal does, is because the result of the action of the water envelops the zinc in a kind of protecting coat. We have learned in consequence, that if we put into our vessel only the zinc and water, they, by themselves, do not give rise to much action, and we get no result. But suppose I proceed to dissolve off this varnish—this encumbering substance—which I can do by a little acid; the moment I do this I find the zinc acting upon the water exactly as the iron did, but at the common temperature. The acid in no way is altered, except in its combination with the oxide of zinc which is produced. I have now poured the acid into the glass, and the effect is as though I were applying heat to cause this boiling up. There is something coming off from the zinc very abundantly, which is not steam. There is a jar full of it; and you will find that I have exactly the same combustible substance remaining in the vessel, when I hold it upside down, that I produced during the experiment with the iron barrel. This is what we get from water, the same substance which is contained in the candle.

Let us now trace distinctly the connection between these two points. This is hydrogen—a body classed among those things which in chemistry we call elements, because we can get nothing else out of them. A candle is not an elementary body, because we can get carbon out of it; we can bet this hydrogen out of it, or at least out of the water which it supplies. And this gas has been so named hydrogen, because it is that element which, in association with another generates water. Mr. Anderson having now been able to get two or three jars of gas, we shall have a few experiments to make, and I want to show you the best way of making these experiments. I am not afraid to show you, for I wish you to make experiments, if you will only make them with care and attention, and the assent of those around you. As we advance in chemistry we are obliged to deal with substances which are rather injurious if in their wrong places; the acids, and heat, and conbustible things we use, might do harm if carelessly employed. If you want to make hydrogen, you can make it easily from bits of zinc, and sulphuric or muriatic acid. Here is what in former times was called the “philosopher’s candle.” It is a little phial with a cork and a tube or pipe passing through it. And I am now putting a few little pieces of zinc into it. This little instrument I am going to apply to a useful purpose in our demonstrations, for I want to show you that you can prepare hydrogen, and make some experiments with it as you please, at your own homes. Let me here tell you why I am so careful to fill this phial nearly, and yet not quite full. I do it because the evolved gas, which, as you have seen, is very combustible, is explosive to a considerable extent when mixed with air, and might lead to harm if you were to apply a light to the end of that pipe before all the air had been swept out of the space above the water. I am now about to pour in the sulphuric acid. I have used very little zinc and more sulphuric acid and water, because I want to keep it at work for some time. I therefore take care in this way to modify the proportions of the ingredients so that I may have a regular supply—not too quick and not too slow. Supposing I now take a glass and put it upside down over the end of the tube, because the hydrogen is light I expect that it will remain in that vessel a little while. We will now test the contents of our glass to see if there be hydrogen in it; I think I am safe in saying we have caught some [applying a light]. There it is, you see. I will now apply a light to the top of the tube. There is the hydrogen burning (FIG. 71). There is our philosophical candle. It is a foolish, feeble sort of a flame, you may say, but it is so hot that scarcely any common flame gives out so much heat. It goes on burning regularly, and I am now about to put that flame to burn under a certain arrangement, in order that we may examine its results and make use of the information which we may thereby acquire. Inasmuch as the candle produces water, and this gas comes out of the water, let us see what this gives us by the same process of combustion that the candle went through when it burnt in the atmosphere; and for that purpose I am going to put the lamp under this apparatus (FIG. 72), in order to condense whatever may arise from the combustion within it. In the course of a short time you will see moisture appearing in the cylinder, and you will get the water running down the side, and the water from this hydrogen flame will have absolutely the same effect upon all our tests, being obtained by the same general process as in the former case. This hydrogen is a very beautiful substance. It is so light that it carries things up; it is far lighter than the atmosphere; and I dare say I can show you this by an experiment which, if you are very clever, some of you may even have skill enough to repeat. Here is our generator of hydrogen, and here are some soapsuds. I have an India-rubber tube connected with the hydrogen generator, and at the end of the tube is a tobacco pipe. I can thus put the pipe into the suds and blow bubbles by means of the hydrogen. You observe how the bubbles fall downward when I blow them with my warm breath; but notice the difference when I blow them with hydrogen. [The lecturer here blew bubbles with hydrogen, which rose to the roof of the theatre.] It shows you how light this gas must be in order to carry with it not merely the ordinary soap bubble, but the larger portion of a drop hanging to the bottom of it. I can show its lightness in a better way than this; larger bubbles than these may be so lifted up; indeed, in former times balloons used to be filled with this gas. Mr. Anderson will fasten this tube on to our generator, and we shall have a stream of hydrogen here with which we can charge this balloon made of collodion. I need not even be very careful to get all air out, for I know the power of this gas to carry it up. [Two collodion balloons were inflated and sent up, one being held by a string.] Here is another larger one, made of thin membrane, which we will fill and allow to ascend; you will see they will all remain floating about until the gas escapes.

What, then, are the comparative weights of these substances? I have a table here which will show you the proportion which their weights bear to each other. I have taken a pint and a cubic foot as the measures, and have placed opposite to them the respective figures. A pint measure of this hydrogen weighs three-quarters of our smallest weight, a grain, and a cubic foot weighs one-twelfth of an ounce; whereas a pint of water weighs 8,750 grains, and a cubic foot of water weighs almost 1,000 ounces. You see, therefore, what a vast difference there is between the weight of a cubic foot of water and a cubic foot of hydrogen.

Hydrogen gives rise to no substance that can become solid, either during combustion or afterward as a product of its combustion; but when it burns it produces water only; and if we take a cold glass and put it over the flame, it becomes damp, and you have water produced immediately in appreciable quantity; and nothing is produced by its combustion but the same water which you have seen the flame of the candle produce. It is important to remember that this hydrogen is the only thing in nature which furnishes water as the sole product of combustion.

And now we must endeavor to find some additional proof of the general character and composition of water, and for this purpose I will keep you a little longer, so that at our next meeting we may be better prepared for the subject. We have the power of arranging the zinc which you have seen acting upon the water by the assistance of an acid, in such a manner as to cause all the power to be evolved in the place where we require it. I have behind me a voltaic pile, and I am just about to show you, at the end of this lecture, its character and power, that you may see what we shall have to deal with when next we meet. I hold here the extremities of the wires which transport the power from behind me, and which I shall cause to act on the water.

We have previously seen what a power of combustion is possessed by the potassium, or the zinc, or the iron filings; but none of them show such energy as this. [The lecturer here made contact between the two terminal wires of the battery, when a brilliant flash of light was produced.] This light is, in fact, produced by a forty-zinc power of burning; it is a power that I can carry about in my hands through these wires at pleasure, although if I applied it wrongly to myself, it would destroy me in an instant, for it is a most intense thing, and the power you see here put forth while you count five [bringing the poles in contact and exhibiting the electric light] is equivalent to the power of several thunder-storms, so great is its force (). And that you may see what intense energy it has, I will take the ends of the wires which convey the power from the battery, and with it I dare say I can burn this iron file. Now this is a chemical power, and one which, when we next meet, I shall apply to water, and show you what results we are able to produce.

Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD