II – INTERRUPTED EXPERIMENTS WITH IRON SULPHATE
We go a step further again in our study of matter. Hitherto the experiments have been carried out either by day or by night. Now we proceed to combine the day experiment with the night experiment in the following manner. We use a solution of Iron sulphate and let it rise in filter paper during the day. The liquid stops rising, and the filter paper becomes dry, as described previously. The day experiment is finished.
After sunset, with the beginning of night, we start the process of rising again.Once more Iron sulphate is allowed to rise through the experiment formed during day, after several hours of interruption. The solution passes through the filter paper,reaches the border line formed during the day, passes it and rises higher until the second limit is reached in the early morning hours. Once more the filter paper dries. The second part of the experiment is finished.
The result is definitely startling. Again another pattern is formed by Iron sulphate.The pattern becomes clearer after some days, it “matures.” The forms stand out very clearly, in a deeper ochre yellow than the rest of the filter paper. Quite impressive forms are visible. Plate 5, Figs. 9 and 10 are two examples again selected out of many thousands of experiments. The two examples depicted here can really stand as symbolic pictures for the formative force hidden in Iron sulphate. They look similar to fingers pointing downward, sometimes like a closed fist, with one pointing finger. A strange,but often noticeable phenomenon is a minute deposit of Iron salt at the end of the finger-like form, adding to the impression of a finger with a nail.
This type of picture is only obtainable if the experiment is carried out in the above-mentioned way, at first during the day and then restarted in the evening, and finished in the early morning hours. The forms vary according to the various days or months, in which the experiments are conducted; still, the main characteristics remain the same.
When we try to understand this specific formative force of Iron sulphate revealed here, and then return to the results obtained with a mixture of Iron sulphate and Silver nitrate it is quite easy to understand how the arrow-like forms are built through the combined activity of silver and iron.