Désiré GERNEZ (1834-1910) chemist and physicist.... - Lot 318 - Ader

Lot 318
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Désiré GERNEZ (1834-1910) chemist and physicist.... - Lot 318 - Ader
Désiré GERNEZ (1834-1910) chemist and physicist. Autograph manuscript signed, Recherches sur le phénomène de la surfusion cristalline du soufre et la vitesse de transformation du soufre prismatique en octaédrique (Research on the phenomenon of crystalline supercooling of sulfur and the rate of transformation of prismatic sulfur into octahedral), 18884-1885; 2 notebooks in-4 (23.4 x 18.2 cm), sheets, about 50 pages, in autograph folder (small tears in the folder), with erasures and corrections. Interesting manuscript of a scientific work. Supercooling is the state of a material that remains in liquid phase when its temperature is lower than its solidification point. A small disturbance can be enough to trigger the transformation into a solid phase. To study this phenomenon, Gernez placed sulfur dust in glass tubes which he heated to 95° (sometimes more), then cooled before touching the supercooled liquid with a prismatic crystal carried at the end of a platinum wire. This manuscript contains two parts, the first of which is divided into 8 chapters: 1. Upper temperature limit of the transformation; 2. Regular course of devitrification; 3. Influence of the ambient temperature on the rate of transformation; 4. Influence of the temperature at which the prisms were produced; 5. Influence of the duration of the stay of the prisms in the bath where they originated; 6. Influence of the temperature at which the sulfur was melted before being solidified into prisms; 7. Influence of the duration of the stay in the melting bath; 8. Influence of the previous operations to which the sulfur was subjected. The second part is in the form of a laboratory notebook, in which Gernez recorded the result of his experiments between May 14, 1884 and May 20, 1885. Pages of attached notes contain additional passages: "As in my previous research, I have endeavored to determine as precisely as possible the conditions of the experiments, all of which may have an influence on the phenomenon to be measured [...The sulfur being melted at a temperature T maintained a certain time τ, I withdraw the tube from the fusion bath and in a fast way for the supercooling bath at the temperature t where it remains a time τ'; I touch then the liquid [to] make there at once then these prisms from one end to the other of the tube"... Physicist and chemist, Désiré Gernez (Valenciennes, 1834 - Paris, 1910) was Pasteur's assistant in the laboratory of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, and then studied, with Pasteur, the diseases of wines and silkworms. Professor of chemistry at the Ecole Centrale in 1873, then lecturer at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in 1881, he was the author of research on bodies in unstable equilibrium: crystallization of supersaturated solutions, supercooling, boiling delay of liquids and supersaturation of gases. In 1906, he was elected member of the Academy of Sciences. This study was published, with a different wording, in the Annales de Chimie et de Physique, 6e série, t. VII, Paris, G. Masson, 1886, pp. 233-259. The printed text is longer, but contains less numerical data than the present manuscript, which thus appears as a preparatory version of the final memoir.
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