"
It has been shown, however, in Chapter VI. that the range over which
mixtures of acetylene and air are explosive depends on the size of the
vessel, or more particularly on the diameter of the tube, in which they
are stored; so that if the burner tube between the air inlets and the
point of ignition can be made small enough in diameter, a normally
explosive mixture will cease to exhibit explosive properties. Manifestly,
if a tube is made very small in diameter, it will only pass a small
volume of gas, and it may be useless for the supply of an atmospheric
burner; but Le Chatelier's researches have proved that a tube may be
narrowed at one spot only, in such fashion that the explosive wave
refuses to pass the constriction, while the virtual diameter of the tube,
as far as passage of gas is concerned, remains considerably larger than
the size of the constriction itself. Moreover, inasmuch as the speed of
propagation of the explosion is strictly fixed by the conditions
prevailing, if the speed at which the mixture, of acetylene and air
travels from the air inlets to the point of ignition is more rapid than
the speed at which the explosion tends to travel from the point of
ignition to the air inlets, the said mixture of acetylene and air will
burn quietly at the orifice without attempting to fire backwards into the
tube.
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