INSPITE of the many investigations that have been made concerning the nature of gaseous explosions, the subject offers many fundamental problems for solution.A study of the literature reveals no conclusive evidence of the effect of varying conditions of initial temperature upon the characteristics of gaseous explosions; much of it is conflicting and apparently irreconcilable.Dixon's2 work brought out the fact that an increase in

dots show experimentally determined values for the equivalent mixture C2H2 + C2H6. There is a close correspondence.In Diagram 11 the continuous curve shows the speeds of uniform movement of flame in a tube 2.5 cm. in diameter for propane-air,13 while the dotted curves show the speeds in the equivalent mixtures C5Hi2 + CH4 and 3 C5Hi2 + 2 H2.Though the agreement with the mixture containing hydrogen is not so good as with the hydrocarbon mixture, it still seems close when the great differences in the maximum speeds and the ranges of inflammability, of the constituent gases, pentane and hydrogen, are compared (see Diagram 1).Law of Flame SpeedsThese few results are instructive, and should prove of value as an aid to the law of flame speeds in further investigations. The law of flame speeds is a simple additive relationship for calculating the speed-percentage curves for complex inflammable gases from the curves with the simple constituent gases. This relationship has been developed in detail in a number of papers12 '4'3•11'34•35•27•36'37 and will not be discussed here, but a comparison of calculated and observed speed percentages will be of interest from the point of view of the present paper, and such a comparison is made in Diagram 12 for equimolecular mixtures of methane, hydrogen, and carbon monoxide, and will indicate the utility of the speed law.

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