Bismuth is similarly attacked, but slowly, at a white heat.
To start a new furnace, the front side is closed provisionally by a brick wall, a fire lighted inside, and the temperature raised very gradually to a white heat.
It is a dark yellow powder, which fuses at a high temperature, the liquid on cooling depositing shining tabular crystals; at a white heat it loses oxygen and yields the monoxide.
Gases, like atmospheric air, hydrogen or carbon dioxide do not become luminous if they are placed in tubes, even when heated up far beyond white heat as in the electric furnace.
The fact that the gases with which we are most familiar are not rendered luminous by being heated in a tube to a temperature well above a white heat has often been a stumbling block and raised the not unreasonable doubt whether approximately homogeneous oscillations could ever be obtained by a mere thermal process.
