hot round Iron-Ring, which just
incompasses the place that is to be cut, or else by a _Sulphur'd_ Threed,
which is often wound about the place where the separation is to be made,
and then fired. Or Secondly, A Glass may be cracked by cooling it suddenly
in any place with Water, or the like, after it has been all leisurely and
gradually heated very hot. Both which _Phaenomena_ seem manifestly to
proceed from the _expansion_ and contraction of the parts of the Glass,
which is also made more probable by this circumstance which I have
observed, that a piece of common window-glass being heated in the middle
very suddenly with a live Coal or hot Iron, does usually at the first crack
fall into pieces, whereas if the Plate has been gradually heated very hot,
and a drop of cold Water and the like be put on the middle of it, it only
flaws it, but does not break it asunder immediately.

A Fourth Argument may be drawn from this Experiment; Take a Glass-pipe, and
fit into a solid stick of Glass, so as it will but just be moved in it.
Then by degrees heat them whilst they are one within another, and they will
grow stiffer, but when they are again cold, they will be as easie to be
turned as before. This Expansion of Glass is more manifest in this
Experiment.

Take a stick of Glass of a considerable length, and fit it so between the
two ends or screws of a Lath, that it may but just easily turn, and that
the very ends of it may be just toucht and susteined thereby; then applying
the flame of the Candle to the middle of it, and heating it hot, you will
presently find the Glass to stick very fast on those points, and not
without much difficulty to be convertible on them, before that by removing
the flame for a while from it, it be suffered to cool, and when you will
find it as easie to be turned round as at the first.

From all which Experiments it is very evident, that all those Bodies, and
particularly Glass, suffers an Expansion by Heat, and that a very
considerable one, whilst they are in a state of Fusion. For _Fluidity_, as
I elsewhere mention, _being nothing but an effect of very strong and quick
shaking motion, whereby the parts are, as it were, loosened from each
other, and consequently leave an interjacent space or vacuity_; it follows,
that all those shaken Particles must necessarily take up much more room
then when they were at rest, and lay quietly upon each other. And this is
further confirmed by a Pot of _boyling Alabaste