Excerpt from The Diffusion of Gases Through Liquids and Allied Experiments

The experiments in Chapter I, made during a period of eleven years, with an ordinary glass balloon - shaped Cartesian diver with a small aperture, culminated in a plausible value of the diffusion coefficient (i. E., grams of gas or standard volume of gas transpiring per second across an orthogonal square centimeter, in case of a unit pressure gradient) of the imprisoned air through water, together with suggestive relations of the mean viscosity of the imaginary medium within the molecular pores of the liquid through which a single molecule of the gas virtually transpires. The investigation was therefore taken up on a more extended scale, for different pairs of gases.

In Chapter II the diver is modified in form and the endeavor is made to obtain equal areas in the section of the cylindrical swimmer and the annular space without, in order to conform more closely to the equation of diffusion. The theory of the phenomenon and the errors involved are discussed. It appears that. Even for mixed gases, the volumes diffusing (if not the masses) are fully determinable. The accuracy essentially depends on the measure ment of absolute temperature and of barometric pressure and should there fore be of an order below I 27 30 per C. Or per centimeter of mercury. As the masses of gas contained are as a rule much less than 10 - 2 gram, even in case of air, the weight less than gram is determinable, showing the remarkable sensitiveness of the method. Moreover, in the region of constant temperature, the limit of sensitiveness is immensely greater.

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