Burning, tasteless, and acidic waters

Burning, tasteless, and acidic waters

[4.120] The particles that are evaporated are distinguished into various types.

1. Burning waters or spirits

The first subkind are those that are so mobile and fine that they can only ignite air.

The second subkind are those that are the finest of all. These can be easily evaporated. These are enclosed in vessels carefully sealed by chemists and collected simultaneously, form .

These are often extracted from wine, wheat, and many other substances.

2. Sweet or tasteless waters

Examples are those distilled from plants or other bodies.

3. Corrosive and acidic waters or sharp juices

These are extracted from salts through a significant force of fire.

Sublimates and oils

[4.121] Some thicker particles, such as those of liquid mercury and salts, adhere to the tops of vessels and solidify into hard bodies. These require a considerable force to be lifted into the air as a sublimate.

However, oils are the most difficult to evaporate from hard and dry bodies. This must be done not so much by the force of fire as by a certain art.

Their particles are thin and branched. This is why a strong force would break and tear them apart before they could be drawn from the channels of these bodies.

Therefore, a lot of water is poured over them. The smooth and slippery particles of the water permeate these channels and gradually extract and carry them away.

How changing the degree of heat changes its effect

[4.122] In all these cases, the degree of heat must be observed. This is because, with its variation, the effect varies in some way.

Many bodies, when first subjected to gentle heat and then gradually to stronger heat, dry out and emit various particles. They emit particles that they would not release but rather would entirely liquefy if tormented from the beginning with strong fires.

[4.123] On lime.

The manner of applying fire also affects its result. Some bodies, if heated all at once, become liquid, but if a strong flame licks their surface, it turns them into lime.

All hard bodies that are reduced to the finest powder solely by the action of fire, namely by the breaking or expulsion of some of their finer particles that previously joined the rest, are commonly said by chemists to be converted into lime.

There is no other difference between ashes and lime than that ashes are the remnants of those bodies, a considerable part of which has been consumed by fire, whereas lime consists of those bodies that almost entirely remain after complete combustion.

How is Glass Made?

[4.124] The ultimate effect of fire is the conversion of lime and ashes into glass.

After the finest particles of the bodies being burned have been extracted and rejected, the remaining ones are left as lime or ashes. These are so solid and thick that they cannot be lifted upward by the force of fire.

They usually have irregular and angular shapes. This makes them not adhere to each other mutually, nor do they touch each other except in very tiny points.

However, when a powerful and prolonged fire exerts its force on them, finer particles of the earth-aether, along with the air-aether globules, rapidly move around them in all directions.

This gradually:

• wears down their angles
• smoothens their surfaces
• bend some of their surfaces

This makes them form glass by connecting with each other, from flowing and merging with one another on small surfaces.

How are its particles connected?

[4.125] When two bodies with surfaces of some width encounter each other directly, they cannot approach each other so closely that some space does not intervene.

This space is occupied by the globules of the air-aether.

However, if one is moved over the other obliquely, nothing prevents them from immediately touching each other, at least if the surfaces of both are smooth and flat.

But if they are rough and uneven, they are gradually smoothed and flattened by this very movement.

Therefore:

• the disconnected particles of lime and ashes are represented here by bodies B and C
• the connected particles of glass are represented by bodies G and H.

From this single difference creates all the properties of glass from the intense and prolonged action of fire.

Why it is liquid when glowing and easily takes on any shape.

[4.126] When glass is still glowing, it is liquid because its particles move easily with the force of fire, with which they were already smoothed and bent before.

When it begins to cool, it can take on any shape. This is common to all bodies liquefied by fire; for while they are still liquid, their particles easily adapt to any shape, and when they later solidify, they retain the same shapes they last assumed. Glass can also be drawn into very thin threads like hairs because its particles, already starting to solidify, flow more easily over one another than they can be separated from each other.

Why it is very hard when cold?

[4.127] When glass has completely cooled, it is very hard but also very brittle, becoming more brittle the faster it cools.

The cause of its hardness is that it consists only of particles that are sufficiently thick and inflexible, which adhere to each other not by the interweaving of branches but by direct contact. Many other bodies are softer because their particles are flexible, or they end in some flexible branches that, being mutually attached, connect them.

However, no adhesion between two bodies can be stronger than the one that arises from their immediate contact; they touch each other so that neither is in motion to be separated from the other. This happens to the particles of glass as soon as they are removed from the fire because their thickness, proximity, and uneven shapes prevent them from being preserved in their motion against the surrounding air.

Why is it very brittle?

[4.128] Nevertheless, glass is very brittle because the surfaces on which its particles touch each other are very small and few. Many other softer bodies are more difficult to break because their parts are so intertwined that they cannot be separated without breaking and tearing many of their branches.

[4.129] Why its fragility decreases if it cools slowly.

It is also more fragile when it cools quickly than when it cools slowly; indeed, its channels are quite wide when glowing because, at that time, much matter of the first element, along with the globules of the second and perhaps some of the finer particles of the third, pass through them.

When it cools spontaneously, they become narrower because only the globules of the second element passing through them require less space.

If cooling occurs too quickly, glass becomes hard before its channels can be constricted in this way. As a result, these globules always later exert force to separate its particles from each other.

Since these particles are joined solely by their own contact, one cannot be separated from another even slightly without immediately separating more others, those close to it on the surface where this separation began. Thus, glass is entirely shattered.

This is why those who make glass vessels remove them gradually from the furnaces to cool slowly.

If cold glass is exposed to fire so that one part is heated much more than others nearby, it will break in that part. This happens because its channels cannot be dilated by heat, with the channels of neighboring parts remaining unchanged, so that it is separated from them. But if glass, first slowly heated and then gradually subjected to stronger heat, is heated equally in all parts, it will not break because all its channels will be dilated equally and at the same time.

Why is it Transparent?

[4.130] Glass is transparent because, during its formation, it is liquid. The material of fire flowing around its particles carves numerous channels through which the globules of the air-aether, passing freely, can transfer the action of light in all directions along straight lines.

It is not necessary for these channels to be perfectly straight but only uninterrupted.

For example, if we imagine glass to consist of perfectly spherical and equal particles but so thick that globules of the second element can pass through the triangular space that must remain between three mutually touching spheres, that glass will be completely transparent, even though it is much denser than the glass we currently have.

How Glass Becomes Colored?

[4.131] However, when metals or other bodies are mixed with the materials from which glass is made, whose particles resist fire more and are not as easily smoothed as others that compose it, it becomes less transparent and acquires various colors depending on how these harder particles more or less block its channels in different ways.

Why it is rigid like an arch? Why Do rigid bodies, when bent, spontaneously return to their original shape?

[4.132] Glass is rigid, so that indeed it can be bent somewhat by an external force without breaking, but afterwards, it springs back with force like an arch and returns to its original shape.

This is evident when it is drawn into very thin threads. And this property of springing back generally applies to all hard bodies whose particles are connected by immediate contact, not by the interweaving of branches. For since they have numerous channels through which some matter is constantly moving, as there is no vacuum, and their shapes are suitable for providing free passage to this matter, having been formed by its action, such bodies cannot be bent without varying somewhat the shape of these channels.

This causes the particles of matter, accustomed to passing through them, to impinge on their walls, creating an opposing force to restore the original shape.

If, for example, in a loose arch, the channels through which the globules of the air-aether usually pass are circular, it is to be supposed that in a tense or bent arch, they are elliptical, and the globules striving to pass through them impinge on their walls along the smaller diameters of these ellipses.

Thus, they have the force to restore the shape of the arch. Although the force in each globule of the second element is small, because many are constantly attempting to traverse many pores in the same arch, the combined forces of all of them can be significant.

A long-tense arch, especially if made of wood or some not very hard material, gradually loses the force of springing back because the shapes of its channels, through prolonged friction of the particles of matter passing through them, gradually adapt more and more to their dimensions.