The behaviour of water under hydrostatic tension: III

Some further experiments on the behaviour of water under tension are described, which appear to confirm the conclusions of the first two papers in this series. It appears that, under favourable conditions, water in a glass tube can support tensions as high as 60 atmospheres. A simple theoretical investigation shows that the commonly held view that the tensile strength of a liquid should be numerically equal to the "intrinsic pressure" is false. For water, a reasonable theoretical value would be 500 to 1000 atmospheres for the tensile strength, which is higher than anything that has been actually measured, though two possible explanations of this discrepancy can be suggested. In any case, it is clear that the discrepancy is much less serious than is usually supposed. The same theoretical considerations can be applied to the experiments of Kenrick, Gilbert and Wismer on the superheating of liquids, and their results can be accounted for without any extra assumptions.