On Two Liquid States of Sulphur S_λ and S_μ and their Transition Point

Abstract

It is well known that melted sulphur when heated becomes suddenly dark brown and viscous in the neighbourhood of 160- 170°. These and other facts rendered it probable that there was a transition point in liquid sulphur, and that two liquid states could be proved to exist, one of them being stable below the transition point, and the other above it. According to the phase rule, a single substance can exist in three phases (two liquid and one vapour phase) only as a non-variant system at a single temperature and pressure. Thus, if the two liquid forms were not completely miscible, the lower one might form the greater part of the material until, as the temperature rose, it became saturated with the upper one and a new phase separated out. This phenomenon would mark the transition point, and the smallest further rise in temperature would cause the complete disappearance of the first phase. The substance would then contain a small proportion of the lower form in solution in the upper, and this proportion would diminish with rising temperature. No case of an exactly parallel nature is known; but the transition from “liquid crystals” to an isotropic liquid in the case of certain organic compounds is to a certain extent analogous.