The Permeability of Organic Substances to Water
Abstract Although organic substances are in the ordinary sense regarded as waterproof, actually they are somewhat permeable to water vapor, and this permeability is sufficient to render them inapplicable as covering or sheathing for cables. In view of this, it was decided to study in a quantitative way the phenomenon of permeability to water of organic substances. The method chosen for making these measurements and the results obtained are described in a brief way in the following paragraphs. The first measurements were made with an apparatus which consisted of a hemispherical bell jar, the open part of which was carefully sealed by a sheet of the substance to be tested. To this bell jar was attached, by a ground-glass connection, a tube which could be closed by a stopcock, and which contained phosphorous pentoxide. In this way the vapor pressure of water within the bell jar was maintained at zero. The small apparatus was suspended in a constant-temperature chamber saturated with water vapor. The increase in weight of the weighing tube containing the phosphorous pentoxide was a measure of the amount of water which diffused through the sheet being tested.