“A pure elastic fluid is one the constituent particles of which are all alike, or in no way distinguishable. Steam, or aqueous vapour, hydrogenous gas, oxygenous gas… and several others are of this kind. …Whatever …may be the shape or figure of the solid atom abstractedly, when surrounded by such an atmosphere it must be globular; but as all the globules in any small given volume are subject to the same pressure, they must be equal in bulk, and will therefore be arranged in horizontal strata, like a pile of shot.”

— John Dalton, book A New System of Chemical Philosophy

Source: A New System of Chemical Philosophy (1808), Ch. II. On the Constitution of Bodies, Sect. 1. On the Constitution of Pure Elastic Fluids

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A pure elastic fluid is one the constituent particles of which are all alike, or in no way distinguishable. Steam, or a…" by John Dalton?

John Dalton6

English chemist, meteorologist and physicist 1766–1844

Related quotes

“Substances can exist in three states – gas, liquid and solid. Water exists in all three states: gas (steam or water vapour), liquid (ordinary water) and solid (ice}. Properties of gases, liquids and solids are different.”

C. N. R. Rao (1934) Indian chemist

Source: Understanding Chemistry (1999), p. 56

“When we attempt to conceive the number of particles in an atmosphere, it is somewhat like attempting to conceive the number of stars in the universe; we are confounded with the thought. But if we limit the subject, by taking a given volume of any gas, we seem persuaded that, let the divisions be ever so minute, the number of particles must be finite; just as in a given space of the universe, the number of stars and planets cannot be infinite.”

John Dalton book A New System of Chemical Philosophy

Source: A New System of Chemical Philosophy (1808), Ch. III On Chemical Synthesis

“Hydrogen is a light, odorless gas, which, given enough time, turns into people.”

Edward Robert Harrison (1919–2007) British astronomer

Smithsonian Magazine, December, 1995.

“As a result, there is an electrostatic attraction between the oxygen atom of one water molecule and the hydrogen of another (Fig. 2-lb), called a hydrogen bond.”

Albert L. Lehninger (1917–1986) American biochemist

Principles of Biochemistry, Ch. 2 : Water

“When earth meets with fire and is dissolved by the keenness of it, it would drift about, whether it were dissolved in fire itself, or in some mass of air or water, until the parts of it meeting and again being united became earth once more; for it never could pass into any other kind. But when water is divided by fire or by air, it may be formed again and become one particle of fire and two of air: and the divisions of air may become for every particle broken up two particles of fire. And again when fire is caught in air or in waters or in earth, a little in a great bulk, moving amid a rushing body, and contending with it is vanquished and broken up, two particles of fire combine into one figure of air: and when air is vanquished and broken small, from two whole and one half particle one whole figure of water will be composed. Let us also reckon it once again thus: when any of the other kinds is intercepted in fire and is divided by it through the sharpness of its angles and its sides, if it forms into the shape of fire, it at once ceases from being divided…”

Plato book Timaeus

Section 57a, Tr. R. D. Archer-Hind, The Timaeus of Plato (1888) pp. 203-205. https://books.google.com/books?id=q2YMAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA203 <br class="br">Timaeus

“This idea is that laws which purport to be statements of what actually occurs are statistical in character as distinct from so-called dynamic laws that are abstract and mathematical, and disguised definitions. Recognition of the statistical nature of physical laws was first effected in the case of gases when it became evident that generalizations regarding the behavior of swarms of molecules were not descriptions or predictions of the behavior of any individual particle. A single molecule is not and cannot be a gas. It is consequently absurd to suppose that a scientific law is about the elementary constituents of a gas. It is a statement of what happens when a large number of such constituents interact with one another under certain conditions.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Time and Individuality (1940)

“If Atomes are as small, as small can bee,
They must in quantity of Matter all agree.”

Margaret Cavendish The Blazing World

'The weight of Atomes', in The Atomic Poems of Margaret (Lucas) Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, from her Poems, and Fancies, 1653, an electronic edition. Edited with an introduction by Leigh Tillman Partington. http://womenwriters.digitalscholarship.emory.edu/toc.php?id=atomic

“[Imlac continues] "It was never supposed that cogitation is inherent in matter, or that every particle is a thinking being. Yet, if any part of matter be devoid of thought, what part can we suppose to think? Matter can differ from matter only in form, density, bulk, motion, and direction of motion: to which of these, however varied or combined, can consciousness be annexed? To be round or square, to be solid or fluid, to be great or little, to be moved slowly or swiftly one way or another, are modes of material existence, all equally alien from the nature of cogitation. If matter be once without thought, it can only be made to think by some new modification, but all the modifications which it can admit are equally unconnected with cogitative powers."”

Samuel Johnson book The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

Source: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), Chapter 48

“Entropy is not about speeds or positions of particles, the way temperature and pressure and volume are, but about our lack of information.”

Hans Christian von Baeyer (1938) American physicist

Source: Information, The New Language of Science (2003), Chapter 11, The Message on the Tombstone, The meaning of entropy, p. 97-98

“1. Small particles called atoms exist and compose all matter; 2. They are indivisible and indestructible; 3. Atoms of the same chemical element have the same chemical properties and do not transmute or change into different elements.”

John Dalton (1766–1844) English chemist, meteorologist and physicist

A New System of Chemical Philosophy, Part I http://books.google.com/books?id=Wp7QAAAAMAAJ (1808) as quoted by Richard Reeves, A Force of Nature The Frontier Genius of Ernest Rutherford (2008)

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

John Dalton6

Related quotes

Related topics