III. Bakerian lecture.—The rate of explosion in gases

Abstract

The experiments described in this memoir were undertaken with two objects in the first place, to obtain information concerning the course of chemical change pursued by reacting gases; and, secondly, to examine the nature of the “explosion-wave” in gaseous mixtures discovered by M. Berthelot. The idea of using the rate of explosion as a means of determining the course of a chemical reaction occurred to me in 1877, when investigating the influence of steam on the union of carbonic oxide and oxygen. If steam acts as a carrier of oxygen to the carbonic oxide by a series of alternate reductions and oxidations, an increase in the amount of steam present, beyond that required to initiate the reaction, should be accompanied by an increase in the rate of combination up to a certain limit. Attempts were therefore made to detect such an increase by measuring the velocity of the flame in a tube. But while the difference in the rate of explosion between the nearly dry and the moist gases was well marked, the attempts to directly measure the rate of the explosion of the moist gases failed, owing to the great rapidity of the flame. In the spring of 1881 I attempted to measure the rate of explosion of carbonic oxide and oxygen with varying quantities of steam by photographing on a moving plate the flashes at the beginning and end of a closed tube 20 feet long. The two flashes appeared to be simultaneous to the eye, but no record of the rate was obtained, for the apparatus was broken to pieces by the violence of the explosion. Shortly after this attempt was made the first of the brilliant series of papers by MM. Berthelot and Vieille, and by MM. Mallard and Le Chateliek, was read before the French Academy of Sciences. The work of these French chemists has opened a new era in the theory of explosions.