The quantity of acid diminishes somewhat regularly from .2084 grams in series A to .0185 in series K. The volume, which was 154cc in the experiment at 185° in series A, diminishes in the successive series, and in the same series with diminishing temperature, to 69.6cc in the experiment at 78° in series K. It is worthy of notice that the greatest deviations from the formula occur where the liability to error is most serious with respect to pressure (which was measured without a cathetometer), to volume, and to the quantity of acid.
Far more serious than the absolute amount of these divergences, is the regularity which they exhibit. But it must be remembered that the observations are by no means entirely independent, and many sources of possible error, such as the calibration of the tube and the determination of the quantity of acid, might affect the results with considerable regularity.
Only to a slight degree can the divergences from the formula be accounted for by an insufficient exposure to the temperature of the experiment. The observations, except those at 78°, were made with increasing temperatures, and the greatest divergences from the formula are not in the positive direction. Yet the positive divergences occur where we should most expect to find them, if they were due to this cause, viz., in the series in which the greatest quantities of acid were used, and in cases in which the temperature seems to have been raised at once an unusual number of degrees. (See especially the observation at 120° in series D, 'and in general the observations at 185°, which exhibit if not a positive at least a diminution of negative excess.) In the observations at 78°, which were the last of each series, and therefore followed a fall of temperature from 185°, we find in some cases, especially in series G, H, and J, a negative divergence much greater than in the other determinations of the same series, and which appears to be referable to this circumstance.
In Table VI are exhibited the results of experiments by Playfair and Wanklyn,[1] in which the vapor of the acid was diluted with hydrogen or, in a single case (the experiment at 95.5°), by air. Columns I and II of the observed densities relate each to a series of observations by the method of Gay-Lussac, column III contains four independent determinations by the method of Dumas. The numbers in the column of pressures are, as in other similar cases, the partial pressures obtained by subtracting from the total pressure (which was never very much less than that of the atmosphere) that which would be exerted by the hydrogen or air alone.
The first observation of the first series gives the density 1.936, which is doubtless too small, since it is much less than the theoretical
- ↑ Trans. Roy. Soc. Edinb., vol. xxii, p. 455.
