// #18. Natural Affection of Metal and Gas

A man was awoken one night in a strange house by a noise he could not understand. He wanted a light, and wanted it very much, but he had no matches that would take fire by the heat of friction. He knew of many other ways of starting a fire. If water gets to the cargo of lime in a vessel it sets the ship on fire. It is of no use to try to put it out by water, for it only makes more heat. He knew that dried alum and sugar suitably mixed would burst into flame if exposed to the air; that nitric acid and oil of turpentine would take fire if mixed; that flint struck by steel would start fire enough to explode a powder magazine; and that Elijah called down from Heaven a kind of fire that burned twelve "barrels" of water as easily as ordinary water puts out ordinary fire. But he had none of these ways of lighting his candle at hand - not even the last.

So he took a bit of potassium metal, bright as silver, out of a bottle of naphtha, put it in the candle wick, touched it with a bit of dripping ice, and so lighted his candle.

The potassium was so avaricious of oxygen that it decomposed the water to get it. Indeed, it was a case of mutual affection. The oxygen preferred the company of potassium to that of the hydrogen in the water, and went to it even at the risk of being burned.

I was so interested in seeing a bit of silver-like metal and water take fire as they touched that I forgot all about the occasion of the noise.

// #18. Natural Affection of Metal and Gas

A man was awoken one night in a strange house by a noise he could not understand. He wanted a light, and wanted it very much, but he had no matches that would take fire by the heat of friction. He knew of many other ways of starting a fire. If water gets to the cargo of lime in a vessel it sets the ship on fire. It is of no use to try to put it out by water, for it only makes more heat. He knew that dried alum and sugar suitably mixed would burst into flame if exposed to the air; that nitric acid and oil of turpentine would take fire if mixed; that flint struck by steel would start fire enough to explode a powder magazine; and that Elijah called down from Heaven a kind of fire that burned twelve "barrels" of water as easily as ordinary water puts out ordinary fire. But he had none of these ways of lighting his candle at hand - not even the last.

So he took a bit of potassium metal, bright as silver, out of a bottle of naphtha, put it in the candle wick, touched it with a bit of dripping ice, and so lighted his candle.

The potassium was so avaricious of oxygen that it decomposed the water to get it. Indeed, it was a case of mutual affection. The oxygen preferred the company of potassium to that of the hydrogen in the water, and went to it even at the risk of being burned.

I was so interested in seeing a bit of silver-like metal and water take fire as they touched that I forgot all about the occasion of the noise.