A New Story of the Stars (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from A New Story of the Stars In addition to this vibratory motion, every atom is a storehouse of force, though atoms are so minute that, were an orange magnified to the size of the earth, its atoms would range from shot to shell in dimensions. There are millions upon millions in a drop of water. Of these singing atoms the earth is built. Mostly, the atoms are locked together in attractive affinities that exist for ages. Sometimes they are changing partners at the rate of the quickest of Scotch reels a million times multiplied, but, locked or free, they are always vibrating. Not all the ingenuity of man, not all his most refined machinery, can cause a single atom to come to rest. Cailletet and Pictet have produced such cold that the motion of the atoms has been greatly reduced, but with all their care the irrepressible atom still moves. In a gas or vapour the particles are free, and fly about, knocking one another and the sides of the vessel containing them, forcing the piston of the giant engines to do the work of thousands of horses, rending rocks in the dynamite explosions, and sending the molten lava of the volcano high into the air. Then we reduce the motion (cool and condense the vapour, we say), and the molecules cling together by their mutual attraction, but they roll freely over one another and slip so easily that a liquid finds its level. Yet even in the liquid there is still a great unrest. Drop a particle of soluble crimson into a tall jar of liquid, leave it a few days, and the restless atoms carry the colour, particle by particle, up the jar till the whole is tinted. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.