Jones wrote: > Unless you tried a number of liquids to arrive at that conclusion (Kerr > constant) it would seem not to be justified by just comparing nitrobenzene, > which is very reactive -- with water, which is not very reactive.
> The more likely explanation IMHO would involve sonochemistry --and the > exothermic reduction of C6H5NO2. Phenyl groups are notoriously reactive and > sonochemistry is notoriously efficient. Good point. I should have elaborated more on my experiments. I tried dozens of liquids, mostly commercial monomers and oligomers. I routinely measure the Kerr constants of these materials for reasons I won't go into. Besides, these substances are usually not listed anywhere for that physical characteristic. I only tried nitrobenzene because it's more or less the classical Kerr cell liquid and known for its high constant. I don't think there was any chemical reduction because this was a closed recirculating system and there were no gasses released when I opened it. As Horace correctly pointed out, the specific heat of nitrobenzene is quite a bit lower than water. But I think that may be irrelevant in the way I "measured" the heat. Let me describe my setup. There is a 2 inch diameter Griggs device driven by a permanent magnet DC motor. A peristaltic pump is used to recirculate the test liquid through a 3 foot closed loop of 1/4 inch aluminum tubing. The whole system is bled of air before the Griggs device is turned on. The heat was detected from the outside of the aluminum tubing, so I'm not sure that the specific heat of the liquid itself is a factor here. OTOH, I'm a pretty fair inventor, but a rotten scientist. The heat was measured in terms of "hotter than hell in a hurry" and "warmed up kinda slow". The temperature of the aluminum tubing was carefully taken by applying my index finger to it. Hey, I always used the same finger; that must count for something. There appears to be a definite correlation to the Kerr constant. Since I'm driving the Griggs with a PM DC motor, it will be relatively easy to measure watts out/watts in, if I ever get around to making such scientific pretentions. M. _______________________________________________ Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com The most personalized portal on the Web!
