Two Papers on High-Pressure Ice
1912 and 1914. First Edition. Bridgman received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1946 for his invention of an apparatus capable of generating sustained hydrostatic pressures far exceeding those previously attainable, and for the discoveries he made with it. The two papers offered here together constitute the primary and secondary publication of the most celebrated of those discoveries: the existence of five distinct polymorphic forms of ice, each stable within a defined region of pressure and temperature, mapped for the first time across a pressure range reaching 20,500 kgm/cm² — nearly six times the highest pressure at which water had previously been studied. The high-pressure ice phases Bridgman first characterized are now understood to be among the most abundant forms of water in the solar system, present in the interiors of icy moons, and their properties remain central to models of planetary structure and the physics of the deep ocean floor. Item #1301
(1) Water, In the Liquid and Five Solid Forms, Under Pressure; from Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. XLVII, No. 13, pp. 441–558. Boston: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1912. Offprint, 8vo (244 × 159mm), pp. [1], 118, [2], plus 2 inserted plates. Original green printed wrappers, some chips, one from the lower corner of the front wrapper secured with tape, ex-libris stamp of E. K. Rideal to the front wrapper, light damp-stain to the gutter of the final quire, most pages unopened, very good.
The full technical account, conducted at the Jefferson Physical Laboratory, Harvard University, with support from the Rumford Fund of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. As Bridgman states in his introduction, the purpose of the paper is to identify the fundamental facts that any theory of liquids valid for high pressures must accommodate, and to determine the nature of the equilibria between the crystalline and liquid phases; questions that no existing theory of liquids was at that time competent to answer. Beyond the discovery and characterization of the five ice polymorphs and the mapping of their mutual equilibria and transition points, the paper measures the compressibility of liquid water and of each solid phase across the pressure range, documents the anomalous behavior of water near the liquid-vapor curve and at the density maximum, and engages critically with Tammann's theoretical treatment of the liquid-solid equilibrium curve, finding it inadequate to account for the behavior actually observed. The apparatus employed (a nickel-steel high-pressure cylinder with a manganin resistance coil calibrated at the Bureau of Standards) embodies the self-sealing packing Bridgman had developed in preceding years, the invention that made the entire program of research possible by eliminating the leak problem that had constrained all previous high-pressure experimentation. Ex–E. K. Rideal, physical chemist and director of the Davy-Faraday Laboratory at the Royal Institution.
(2) High Pressure and Five Kinds of Ice; extracted from the Journal of the Franklin Institute, Vol. 177, pp. 315-332. Philadelphia: Franklin Institute, 1914. Extracted paper, 8vo (222 x 144mm), pp. 18. Staple and tape-bound, some light toning, near fine.
An abstract of a paper presented to the Section of Physics and Chemistry on November 13, 1913, in which Bridgman presents the principal results of the 1912 investigation to a general scientific audience. The introduction is notable for his effort to convey the scale of the pressures involved to readers unfamiliar with them: the highest pressures ordinarily familiar, he observes, are those of modern artillery, where the average firing pressure of large guns reaches approximately 2,000 atmospheres; the pressures in his experiments (20,000 atmospheres, sufficient if exerted against a one-inch square steel rod to support a locomotive weighing 150 tons) are ten times that amount, and nearly double the highest pressure previously measured, which was produced by the explosion of nitroglycerin in a closed vessel. This is the form in which the discovery of the five ice polymorphs first reached the broader scientific community.
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