Observations placeholder
Dalton, John – Philosophical Experiments – Repulsion; steel and water
Identifier
025340
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
John wrote better explanations for children as teaching aids than he did in his scientific tracts, which tend to be wordy – unnecessarily so at times. So we have taken some extracts from his Philosophical Experiments a book with very small print and few pictures, which nevertheless had the objective of providing ‘young persons with the means of obtaining a knowledge of some of the most important phenomena of nature and the application of science to purposes of utility; and secondly to furnish them with an almost inexhaustible fund of amusement for winter evenings and other occasions when exercises in the open air are obliged to make way for indoor recreation.’
Do not be deluded by the simplicity of the experiments, they each demonstrate the various laws and forces he was trying to explain.
A description of the experience
John Dalton – Philosophical Experiments
Experiments in Chemistry - the Law of Repulsion of atoms
109. If the blade of a well polished knife be dipped into a basin of cold water, the particles of each of these two bodies do not seem to come in contact with each other; for when the blade is taken out, the water slides off, leaving the blade quite dry, as if it had previously been smeared with a greasy substance.
110. In the same way, of a common sewing needle be laid horizontally on a glass of water, it will not sink, but form a kind of trench on the surface on which it lies and floats about. This proceeds from the little attraction which exists between the cold water and the polished steel. It is necessary that both the knife in the last experiment and also the needle, should be dry and clean; otherwise the effect will not be produced