more particularly important in the case of applications to living beings. They refer to mechanical energy, to the relations of thermal energy and chemical energy, to the complete rôle of thermal energy, and finally to the extreme adaptability of electrical energy.
1. Transformation of Mechanical Energy.—Mechanical energy may change into every other form of energy, and all others can change into it, with but one exception, that of chemical energy. Mechanical effort does not produce chemical combination. What we know of the part played by pressure in the reactions of dissociation seems at first to contradict this assertion. But this is only in appearance. Pressure intervenes in these operations only as preliminary work or priming, the purpose of which is to bring the bodies into contact in the exact state in which they must be for the chemical affinities to be able to enter into play.
2. Transformation of Thermal Energy; Priming.—Thermal (or luminous) energy does not change directly into chemical energy. In fact, heat and light favour and even determine a large number of chemical reactions; but if we go down to the foundation of things we are not long before we feel assured that heat and light only serve in some measure for priming for the phenomenon, for preparing the chemical action, for bringing the body into the physical state (liquid, steam) or to the degree of temperature (400° C. for instance, for the combination of oxygen and hydrogen) which are the preliminary indispensable conditions for the entry upon the scene of chemical affinities.
On the contrary, chemical energy may really be transformed into thermal energy. We have an
