The Romance of Modern Chemistry

 ‘II CHAPTER XXVII SOME INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT SOLUTIONS I IF the reader were to glance at the titles of the papers published in any modern chemical journal, he would probably be struck by a number of the most un- pronounceable and incomprehensible names. It is perhaps a little difficult for him to realise how any one can profitably spend time working at “The Reduction of Hydroxylaminohydroumbelluloneoxime” or “The Pre- paration of Ethyl-a-cyano-y-keto-y-phenyl-butyrate,1’ but science is now so specialised that many of the advance workers are necessarily engaged in fields which seem very remote from everyday concerns. Not only, however, is new and strange ground constantly being broken; the old problems, which earlier workers thought they had settled, are regularly coming up for review; new facts are daily discovered which bear on these problems, and which, if they do not clear up difficulties entirely, at least con- tribute to their settlement. So it has been in recent years with the problem of solutions; the last two decades have witnessed an extra- ordinary activity on the part of chemists anxious to throw light on such questions as: What happens to sugar and common salt when they are dissolved in water ? How is the behaviour of the water affected by their presence ? These may at first sight appear to be questions of 302