AN INTERESTING EXPERIMENT.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue LXVIII, 22 June 1912, Page 10

AN INTERESTING EXPERIMENT.

It is rather difficult to imagine liquids as having pores, tnough tnis seems to be the ease as shown by certain familiar experiments. When a ceitain amount of jjowdered sugar is siowiy poured into warm water, the water win dissolve tiie sugar and appear to an»oiu it without increasing its volume, bia;uiariy, when aiconol is poured into water, the resulting volume wiil be less tlian tne sum of the two volumes, .f or, instance, it' fiity parts of water ana iii'ty parts of alcohol be mixed togeuier they will make only ninety-four parts. Apparently one of the liquids Jias entered into the "pores" of the other. This experiment, as commonly performed in laboratories, consists- in putting measured quantities of two liquids together, but the effect would be far more striking were it possible for students to see one of the liquids actually "soaking" into the other. This can be done in the following way: Take two glasses. one filled to the brim with water, and the other with alcohol. In order to show the effect to better advantage color the alcohol with red ink. Place a sheet of paper over the glassful of alcohol, and with a nancl on the paper to keep it down on the rim of the glass invert the tumbler, and the liquid will remain in the glass, owing to the air i pressure on the paper. "Now place the inverted tumbler over the glassful of water, and carefully draw out the paper. This can be, done without spilling a drop of alcohol, and yet as soon as the paper is removed the alcohol will begin to drop. Owing to the fact that it is colored, it is possible to see the alcohol actually "soaking" into the tvater, while tiny air bubbles that were formally contained in the "pores" of the water rise slowly to the top of ,the tumbler. This will continue for some little time until a considerable air space forms in the top of the inverted tumbler.