XXXIII. Some experiments and researches on the saline contents of sea-water, undertaken with a view to correct and improve its chemical analysis

1822 ◽  
Vol 112 ◽  
pp. 448-456 ◽  

In a paper on the temperature and saltness of various seas, which the Royal Society did me the honour to publish in their Transactions for the year 1819, I threw out a conjecture, that the sea might contain minute quantities of every substance in nature, which is soluble in water. For the ocean having communication with every part of the earth through the rivers, all of which ultimately pour their waters into it; and soluble substances, even such as are theoretically incom­patible with each other, being almost in every instance capable of co-existing in solution, provided the quantities be very minute, I could see no reason why the ocean should not be a general receptacle of all bodies which can be held in solution. And although it will appear from the following account, that I have been unsuccessful in some of my attempts to prove the truth of this conjecture, it may fairly be ascribed either to a want of sufficient accuracy in our present methods of chemical analysis, or of the requisite degree of skill in the operator. Some time after the communication to which I have just referred, an extraordinary statement was pointed out to me, upon the authority of Rouelle, a French chemist of the last century, from which it appeared that mercury was contained in sea salt: and I saw soon after in the ‘ Annales du Musée ,' Vol. VII. a paper by the celebrated chemist Proust, who, in a great measure, confirmed that statement, by announcing that he had found traces of mercury in all the specimens of marine acid which he had examined.

Recent work has determined the depth of the Mohorovičić discontinuity at sea and has made it likely that peridotite xenoliths in basaltic volcanic rocks are samples of material from below the discontinuity. It is now possible to produce a hypothetical section showing the transition from a continent to an ocean. This section is consistent with both the seismic and gravity results. The possible reactions of the crust to changes in the total volume of sea water are dis­cussed. It seems possible that the oceans were shallower and the crust thinner in the Archean than they are now. If this were so, some features of the oldest rocks of Canada and Southern Rhodesia could be explained. Three processes are described that might lead to the formation of oceanic ridges; one of these involves tension, one compression and the other quiet tectonic conditions. It is likely that not all ridges are formed in the same way. It is possible that serpentization of olivine by water rising from the interior of the earth plays an important part in producing changes of level in the ocean floor and anomalies in heat flow. Finally, a method of reducing gravity observations at sea is discussed.


1857 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 111-116 ◽  

The Trigonometrical Survey of the United Kingdom commenced in the year 1784, under the immediate auspices of the Royal Society; the first base was traced by General Roy on the 16th of April of that year, on Hounslow Heath, in presence of Sir Joseph Banks, then President of the Society, and some of its most distinguished Fellows. The principal object which the Government had then in view, was the connexion of the Observatories of Paris and Greenwich by means of a triangulation, for the purpose of determining the difference of longitude between the two observatories.


1902 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 35-43
Author(s):  
J. J. Manley

In a paper communicated to the Royal Society, Mr E. T. Günther and the author gave an account of the results obtained from the examination of two samples of water taken from Lake Urmi, and amongst other determinations of a chemical and physical nature, were those of the refractive indices, which were performed with the aid of the Royal Society's large quartz prism and spectrometer, the latter reading by means of micrometers to 2″ of arc. On comparing the values obtained for the refractive indices of the two samples of water with those obtained for the relative densities, it was at once apparent that the former differentiated the two samples quite as distinctly as the latter.


1765 ◽  
Vol 55 ◽  
pp. 326-344 ◽  

The observations of the late transit of Venus, though made with all possible care and accuracy, have not enabled us to determine with certainty the real quantity of the sun's parallax; since, by a comparison of the observations made in several parts of the globe, the sun's parallax is not less than 8" 1/2, nor does it seem to exceed 10". From the labours of those gentlemen, who have attempted to deduce this quantity from the theory of gravity, it should seem that the earth performs its annual revolution round the sun at a greater distance than is generally imagined: since Mr. Professor Stewart has determined the sun's parallax to be only 6', 9, and Mr. Mayer, the late celebrated Professor at Gottingen, who hath brought the lunar tables to a degree of perfection almost unexpected, is of opinion that it cannot exceed 8".


2011 ◽  
pp. 35-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Damljanovic ◽  
I.S. Milic

During the last century, there were many so-called independent latitude (IL) stations with the observations which were included into data of a few international organizations (like Bureau International de l'Heure - BIH, International Polar Motion Service - IPMS) and the Earth rotation programmes for determining the Earth Orientation Parameters - EOP. Because of this, nowadays, there are numerous astrometric ground-based observations (made over many decades) of some stars included in the Hipparcos Catalogue (ESA 1997). We used these latitude data for the inverse investigations - to improve the proper motions in declination ?? of the mentioned Hipparcos stars. We determined the corrections ??? and investigated agreement of our ?? and those from the catalogues Hipparcos and new Hipparcos (van Leeuwen 2007). To do this we used the latitude variations of 7 stations (Belgrade, Blagoveschtschensk, Irkutsk, Poltava, Pulkovo, Warsaw and Mizusawa), covering different intervals in the period 1904.7 - 1992.0, obtained with 6 visual and 1 floating zenith telescopes (Mizusawa). On the other hand, with regard that about two decades have elapsed since the Hipparcos ESA mission observations (the epoch of Hipparcos catalogue is 1991.25), the error of apparent places of Hipparcos stars has increased by nearly 20 mas because of proper motion errors. Also, the mission lasted less than four years which was not enough for a sufficient accuracy of proper motions of some stars (such as double or multiple ones). Our method of calculation, and the calculated ?? for the common IL/Hipparcos stars are presented here. We constructed an IL catalogue of 1200 stars: there are 707 stars in the first part (with at least 20 years of IL observations) and 493 stars in the second one (less than 20 years). In the case of ?? of IL stars observed at some stations (Blagoveschtschensk, Irkutsk, Mizusawa, Poltava and Pulkovo) we find the formal errors less than the corresponding Hipparcos ones and for some of them (stations Blagoveschtschensk and Irkutsk) even less than the new Hipparcos ones.


2003 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 2963-3050 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Sander ◽  
W. C. Keene ◽  
A. A. P. Pszenny ◽  
R. Arimoto ◽  
G. P. Ayers ◽  
...  

Abstract. The cycling of inorganic bromine in the marine boundary layer (mbl) has received increased attention in recent years. Bromide, a constituent of sea water, is injected into the atmosphere in association with sea-salt aerosol by breaking waves on the ocean surface. Measurements reveal that supermicrometer sea-salt aerosol is depleted in bromine by about 50% relative to conservative tracers, whereas marine submicrometer aerosol is often enriched in bromine. Model calculations, laboratory studies, and field observations strongly suggest that these depletions reflect the chemical transformation of particulate bromide to reactive inorganic gases that influence the processing of ozone and other important constituents of marine air. However, currently available techniques cannot reliably quantify many \\chem{Br}-containing compounds at ambient concentrations and, consequently, our understanding of inorganic Br cycling over the oceans and its global significance are uncertain. To provide a more coherent framework for future research, we have reviewed measurements in marine aerosol, the gas phase, and in rain. We also summarize sources and sinks, as well as model and laboratory studies of chemical transformations. The focus is on inorganic bromine over the open oceans, excluding the polar regions. The generation of sea-salt aerosol at the ocean surface is the major tropospheric source producing about 6.2 Tg/a of bromide. The transport of  Br from continents (as mineral aerosol, and as products from biomass-burning and fossil-fuel combustion) can be of local importance. Transport of degradation products of long-lived Br-containing compounds from the stratosphere and other sources contribute lesser amounts. Available evidence suggests that, following aerosol acidification, sea-salt bromide reacts to form Br2 and BrCl that volatilize to the gas phase and photolyze in daylight to produce atomic Br and Cl. Subsequent transformations can destroy tropospheric ozone, oxidize dimethylsulfide (DMS) and hydrocarbons in the gas phase and S(IV) in aerosol solutions, and thereby potentially influence climate. The diurnal cycle of gas-phase \\Br and the corresponding particulate Br deficits are correlated. Higher values of Br in the gas phase during daytime are consistent with expectations based on photochemistry. Mechanisms that explain the widely reported accumulation of particulate Br in submicrometer aerosols are not yet understood. We expect that the importance of inorganic Br cycling will vary in the future as a function of both increasing acidification of the atmosphere (through anthropogenic emissions) and climate changes. The latter affects bromine cycling via meteorological factors including global wind fields (and the associated production of sea-salt aerosol), temperature, and relative humidity.


1766 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 216-223 ◽  

My Lord, The following tables I have compared with the variation chart, published in the year 1756, and so find that they agree pretty well in general, making allowance for the time elapsed: it is true, that, in some few places in the Atlantic Ocean, they differ; yet this may probably arise, as is often the case, from an error in the Montagu's supposed longitude, where such observations were made. But the greatest difference (a greater than should arise, I think, according to common course) appears upon the coast of Portugal, Cape Saint Vincent, and about Gibraltar, near and within sight of land, where the observations are ascertained to the spot. Hence, if mine observed about the year 1756, and those of Mr. Ross's, were both near the truth, at the respective times when they were taken, I know not how to account for this considerable encrease, unless those late extraordinary convulsions, in the bowels of the earth, upon those several coasts, may be found, by further experiments, to have there influenced the directions of the magnetic needle.


2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 11511-11544
Author(s):  
D. Niedermeier ◽  
F. Stratmann ◽  
H. Wex ◽  
E. Brüggemann ◽  
A. Kiselev ◽  
...  

Abstract. The Leipzig Aerosol Cloud Interaction Simulator (LACIS) was used to investigate the hygroscopic growth and activation of sea-salt particles which were generated from three different sea-water samples. Köhler theory was utilized to model the hygroscopic growth of these particles. Some parameters used in this model are unknown for sea-salt. These parameters are combined in an "ionic density" ρion. For each sea-salt sample an average ρion was determined by fitting the Köhler equation to the data from the hygroscopic growth measurements. LACIS was also used to measure the activation of the sea-salt particles at three different supersaturations: 0.10%, 0.16% and 0.30%. A CCN-closure was tested by calculating the critical diameters Dcrit for the sea-salt particles at these supersaturations, using the Köhler model and the corresponding ρion as derived from the hygroscopic growth data. These calculated critical diameters were compared to the measured ones. Measured and calculated values of Dcrit agree within the level of uncertainty. Based on this successful closure, a new parameterization to describe sea-salt-particle hygroscopic growth (at RH>95%) and activation has been developed.


1926 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
J. Alfred Ewing

In this the centenary year of Lord Kelvin's birth it is fitting that the Society should call to remembrance one who was for long its most distinguished Fellow, who first became its President at the age of thirty-nine, and was repeatedly re-elected to the office, which he held for twenty-one years in all, and who used the Society as a medium for the publication of many of his most brilliant discoveries. In the long list of his published papers there are at least one hundred and twenty items communicated to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. No other contributor has done so much to give to our Proceedings and Transactions a world-wide and lasting fame. It was to this Society that he brought, in 1849, his account of Carnot's Theory, which marks the beginning of his study of Thermodynamics, and it was in our Transactions that he published his epochmaking series of papers on the “Dynamical Theory of Heat” from 1851 to 1854. It was here in 1852 that he propounded the doctrine of the Dissipation of Energy. It was here that his investigations of underground temperature and the secular cooling of the Earth appeared in 1860 and 1862. It was here in 1865 that he “briefly refuted” the doctrine of Uniformity in Geology. Here, too, were published his long series of papers on Vortex Motion and Vortex Atoms, from 1867 to 1881, and much of his work on the molecular constitution of matter. Here he first showed, in germ, his mariner's compass, in 1874.


In a paper printed in the Proceedings of the Royal Society,' No. 190, 1878 (vol. 28, pp. 2-35), I gave an account of some experiments undertaken in order to test the possibility of using the Common Balance in place of the Torsion Balance in the Cavendish Experiment. The success obtained seemed to justify the intention expressed in that paper to continue the work, using a large bullion balance, instead of the chemical balance with which the preliminary experiments were made. As I have had the honour to obtain grants from the Royal Society for the construction of the necessary apparatus, I have been able to carry out the experiment on the larger scale which appeared likely to render the method more satisfactory, and this paper contains an account of the results obtained.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document