PAPERS PRESENTED AT GENERAL SESSIONS 103 



As the quotations indicate, carbon (in fuel or food) 

 is the leading illustration of stored energy. The quota- 

 tion of the powers that "do the work of the world" is 

 from so prominent an author in the literature of science 

 as Professor Soddy. Please observe that coal is listed 

 and oxygen not listed. Then perform the concrete ex- 

 periment. Perhaps you can do so well enough in your 

 mind. It has been performed countless millions of times 

 by an ordinaiy fire, and thousands of times in the labora- 

 tory. The chemistry is elementary. Compound (ap- 

 proximately) 12 weight units of carbon, ordinarily a 

 solid, possessing no readily perceptible activity and in- 

 capable of combination without the application of exter- 

 nal heat, with 32 like units of the most universally active 

 substance known, oxygen, a gas, capable of combination 

 whether cold or hot, and the result is heat and light and 

 44 units of a substance more obviously active than solid 

 carbon and less obviously so than oxygen gas. The infer- 

 ence requisite to sustain the illustration is that the mo- 

 tion, or energy, manifested by the heat and light had, 

 immediately before, been in the carbon and not in the 

 oxygen. "Can you beat it?" Please pardon the slang. 



The chemical weight units are of such class that com- 

 mercial weights may be substituted, so that when you 

 burn twelve tons of coal, or rather, of carbon in coal 

 (plus the weight of the ashes, moisture and other irrelev- 

 ant ingredients), you burn or consume thirty-t^^ tons 

 of oxygen, and besides the heat you were after, you pro- 

 duce forty-four tons of carbon dioxide, that goes up the 

 chimney. The light that is also produced is in the same 

 category as the heat, and need not be considered separ- 

 ately. 



Carbon, in wood or coal, has the appearance of a solid 

 possessing no life that can be detected at the woodpile or 

 coal bin. Oxygen, on the other hand, is a gas, Avhicli has 

 life that manifests itself by keeping us alive. ^Moreover, 

 it is, metaphorically, an all-devourer. By devouring car- 

 bon it makes carbon dioxide, by devouring hydrogen it 

 has made all the water of the earth, by devouring silicon, 

 etc., all the granite, by devouring iron all the rust, or 

 iron oxide ore, and, by devouring other kinds of matter. 



