THE 

 LONDON, EDINBURGH, and DUBLIN 



PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE 



AND 



JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 



[FOURTH SERIES.] 



JUNE 1867, 



LIII. a some Phenomena connected with the Adhesion of Liquids 

 to Liquids. By Charles Tomlinson, F.C.S., Lecturer on 

 Experimental Science, King's College School, London*. 



[With a Plate.] 



THE force of adhesion that exists between liquids and liquids 

 is generally treated of under the heads of diffusion and 

 solution. "While, however, there may be little or no adhesion 

 between the respective masses or volumes of two liquids, there 

 may be a powerful adhesion between their surfaces. A drop of 

 creosote, for example, may remain at the bottom of a vessel of 

 water for hours, or even days, apparently unchanged; but if 

 gently deposited on its surface it will disappear, partly by solu- 

 tion and partly by evaporation, in the course of a few minutes. 

 There exists, in fact, at the surface of liquids a remarkable force 

 of adhesion for other liquids, different from what is commonly 

 understood by diffusion and solution, but rather resembling the 

 attraction that has been recorded and measured between disks 

 of glass or metal and liquid surfaces. 



The remarkable properties of liquid surfaces have attracted 

 the attention of physicists at various times. Not to dwell upon 

 the fact noticed by Pliny, and experimented on by Franklin, 

 that oil, by spreading over the surface of water agitated by 

 the wind, tends to calm it (as we believe, by destroying the ad- 

 hesion between the water and the wind), we may refer to the 

 researches of Carradori, who wrote expressly on the subject f, 



* Communicated by the Author. 



t Dr. G. Carradori, Honorary Professor in the University of Pisa, was, 

 I believe, the first to call attention to some of the remarkable properties of 

 the surfaces of liquids. His first memoir, " Deil' Adesione o Attrazione 



Phil Mag. S. 4. Vol. 33. No. 225. June 1867. 2 D 



