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256 Aug 1st 1851  Smith List
                   Cohesion film of water.
[[image of drawing]] 
Reflected a beam of light from a soap film on a shallow cylinder, found the light polarized as from a surface of water.
 Next transmitted the beam through the film, as if through a plate of glass,found the beam polarized at right angles to the plane in which it was polarized by reflection.. The film of water in this case acted as a plate of glass [[word circled]] unannealed [[word circled]]
[[image of a drawing]] When a quantity of water is found on a table, and on the rounded edge of the liquid a small piece of paper is placed, the latter will be drawn on to the liquid as if acted on by an accelerating force..
The explanation of this phenomenon is not difficult. Let a. b. c be the water,and e. f. the paper, then the curvature between [[underline]] b [[underline]] and [[underline]] e [[/underline]] will be greater than between b and f, and consequently the action between the surface of water, and the paper, will be greater towards [[underline]] b [[underline]] [[underline]] e [[/underline]] than b. f..
On this subject, I may mention that the workmen of the S.I. building informed me this morning that [[strikethrough]] the [[/strikethrough]] a thick rope (2 inches diam.) had spread in length on account of the rain at least 2 feet. This rope is used for hoisting the
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Aug 1st 1851     Cohesion  257
mortar and stones for the walls of the edifice, and has been subjected to the rain of yesterday.
 I yesterday blew a bubble on the surface  of a basin of beeswax which had been previously heated. After the wax was cold,the bubble was broken, and the depth of the pit formed by the contractile fore of the bubble measured.
 The depth was about a 1/10 of an inch, the diameter of the bubble was about the same. I propose repeating this experiment with more care. It affords a ready method of determining the contractile form of a bubble.
 Since the contractile force is in the inverse ratio to the diameter, a very minute bubble must exert a very great force on the enclosed material, as for example on a minute portion of air. Indeed this force may be sufficient to compress the air almost into a liquid state, or at least to render it invisible even with the aid of a microscope. If we suppose the air removed a void space would exist between the atoms arranged as a sphere, and this would give case on the same principle to an immense force between the atoms of the water.
 In the case of freezing the [[strikethrough]] water [[/strikethrough]] air disolved in water is expelled. May this be produced by the crystaline form of arrangement of water thus [[image - dots]] 
While water is formed by atoms thus [[image - dots]] uniformly distributed through the space, the effect of heat