Experimental Researches in Electricity Part 49

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[C] Becquerel, Annales de Chimie, 1831. xlvi. p. 283.

[D] Andrews, Philosophical Magazine, 1836. ix. 182.

[E] Schweigger's Jahrbuch de Chimie, &c. 1830. Heft 8. Not understanding German, it is with extreme regret I confess I have not access, and cannot do justice, to the many most valuable papers in experimental electricity published in that language. I take this opportunity also of stating another circ.u.mstance which occasions me great trouble, and, as I find by experience, may make, me seemingly regardless of the labours of others:--it is a gradual loss of memory for some years past; and now, often when I read a memoir, I remember that I have seen it before, and would have rejoiced if at the right time I could have recollected and referred to it in the progress of my own papers.--M.F.

1636. I conclude, therefore, that the _facts_ upon which the doctrine of unipolarity was founded are not adverse to that unity and indivisibility of character which I have stated the current to possess, any more than the phenomena of the pile itself (which might well bear comparison with those of unipolar bodies,) are opposed to it. Probably the effects which have been called effects of unipolarity, and the peculiar differences of the positive and negative surface when discharging into air, gases, or other dielectrics (1480. 1525.) which have been already referred to, may have considerable relation to each other[A].

[A] See also Hare in Silliman's Journal, 1833. xxiv. 246.

1637. M. de la Rive has recently described a peculiar and remarkable effect of heat on a current when pa.s.sing between electrodes and a fluid[A]. It is, that if platina electrodes dip into acidulated water, no change is produced in the pa.s.sing current by making the positive electrode hotter or colder; whereas making the negative electrode hotter increased the deflexion of a galvanometer affected by the current, from 12 to 30 and even 45, whilst making it colder diminished the current in the same high proportions.

[A] Bibliotheque Universelle, 1837, vii. 388.

1638. That one electrode should have this striking relation to heat whilst the other remained absolutely without, seem to me as incompatible with what I conceived to be the character of a current as unipolarity (1627. 1635.), and it was therefore with some anxiety that I repeated the experiment. The electrodes which I used were platina; the electrolyte, water containing about one sixth of sulphuric acid by weight: the voltaic battery consisted of two pairs of amalgamated zinc and platina plates in dilute sulphuric acid, and the galvanometer in the circuit was one with two needles, and gave when the arrangement was complete a deflexion of 10 or 12.

1639. Under these circ.u.mstances heating either electrode increased the current; heating both produced still more effect. When both were heated, if either were cooled, the effect on the current fell in proportion. The proportion of effect due to heating this or that electrode varied, but on the whole heating the negative seemed to favour the pa.s.sage of the current somewhat more than heating the positive. Whether the application of heat were by a flame applied underneath, or one directed by a blowpipe from above, or by a hot iron or coal, the effect was the same.

1640. Having thus removed the difficulty out of the way of my views regarding a current, I did not pursue this curious experiment further. It is probable, that the difference between my results and those of M. de la Rive may depend upon the relative values of the currents used; for I employed only a weak one resulting from two pairs of plates two inches long and half an inch wide, whilst M. de la Rive used four pairs of plates of sixteen square inches in surface.

1641. Electric discharges in the atmosphere in the form of b.a.l.l.s of fire have occasionally been described. Such phenomena appear to me to be incompatible with all that we know of electricity and its modes of discharge. As _time_ is an element in the effect (1418. 1436.) it is possible perhaps that an electric discharge might really pa.s.s as a ball from place to place; but as every thing shows that its velocity must be almost infinite, and the time of its duration exceedingly small, it is impossible that the eye should perceive it as anything else than a line of light. That phenomena of b.a.l.l.s of fire may appear in the atmosphere, I do not mean to deny; but that they have anything to do with the discharge of ordinary electricity, or are at all related to lightning or atmospheric electricity, is much more than doubtful.

1642. All these considerations, and many others, help to confirm the conclusion, drawn over and over again, that the current is an indivisible thing; an axis of power, in every part of which both electric forces are present in equal amount[A] (517. 1627.). With conduction and electrolyzation, and even discharge by spark, such a view will harmonize without hurting any of our preconceived notions; but as relates to convection, a more startling result appears, which must therefore be considered.

[A] I am glad to refer here to the results obtained by Mr. Christie with magneto-electricity, Philosophical Transactions, 1833, p. 113 note. As regards the current in a wire, they confirm everything that I am contending for.

1643. If two b.a.l.l.s A and B be electrified in opposite states and held within each other's influence, the moment they move towards each other, a current, or those effects which are understood by the word current, will be produced. Whether A move towards B, or B move in the opposite direction towards A, a current, and in both cases having the same _direction_, will result. If A and B move from each other, then a _current_ in the opposite direction, or equivalent effects, will be produced.

1644. Or, as charge exists only by induction (1178. 1299.), and a body when electrified is necessarily in relation to other bodies in the opposite state; so, if a ball be electrified positively in the middle of a room and be then moved in any direction, effects will be produced, as _current_ in the same direction (to use the conventional mode of expression) had existed: or, if the ball be negatively electrified, and then moved, effects as if a current in a direction contrary to that of the motion had been formed, will be produced.

1645. I am saying of a single particle or of two what I have before said, in effect, of many (1633.). If the former account of currents be true, then that just stated must be a necessary result. And, though the statement may seem startling at first, it is to be considered that, according to my theory of induction, the charged conductor or particle is related to the distant conductor in the opposite state, or that which terminates the extent of the induction, by all the intermediate particles (1165, 1295.), these becoming polarized exactly as the particles of a solid electrolyte do when interposed between the two electrodes. Hence the conclusion regarding the unity and ident.i.ty of the current in the case of convection, jointly with the former cases, is not so strange as it might at first appear.

1646. There is a very remarkable phenomenon or effect of the electrolytic discharge, first pointed out, I believe, by Mr. Porrett, of the acc.u.mulation of fluid under decomposing action in the current on one side of an interposed diaphragm[A]. It is a mechanical result; and as the liquid pa.s.ses from the positive towards the negative electrode in all the known cases, it seems to establish a relation to the polar condition of the dielectric in which the current exists (1164. 1525.). It has not as yet been sufficiently investigated by experiment; for De la Rive says[B], it requires that the water should be a bad conductor, as, for instance, distilled water, the effect not happening with strong solutions; whereas, Dutrochet says[C] the contrary is the case, and that, the effect is not directly due to the electric current.

[A] Annals of Philosophy, 1816. viii. p. 75.

[B] Annales de Chimie, 1835. xxviii. p. 196.

[C] Annales de Chimie, 1832, xlix. p. 423.

1647. Becquerel, in his Traite de l'Electricite, has brought together the considerations which arise for and against the opinion, that the effect generally is an electric effect[A]. Though I have no decisive fact to quote at present, I cannot refrain from venturing an opinion, that the effect is a.n.a.logous both to combination and convection (1623.), being a case of carrying due to the relation of the diaphragm and the fluid in contact with it, through which the electric discharge is jointly effected; and further, that the peculiar relation of positive and negative small and large surfaces already referred to (1482. 1503. 1525.), may be the direct cause of the fluid and the diaphragm travelling in contrary but determinate directions. A very valuable experiment has been made by M. Becquerel with particles of clay[B], which will probably bear importantly on this point.

[A] Vol. iv. p. 192, 197.

[B] Traite de l'Electricite, i. p. 285.

1648. _As long as_ the terms _current_ and _electro-dynamic_ are used to express those relations of the electric forces in which progression of either fluids or effects are supposed to occur (283.), _so long_ will the idea of velocity be a.s.sociated with them; and this will, perhaps, be more especially the case if the hypothesis of a fluid or fluids be adopted.

1649. Hence has arisen the desire of estimating this velocity either directly or by some effect dependent on it; and amongst the endeavours to do this correctly, may be mentioned especially those of Dr. Watson[A] in 1748, and of Professor Wheatstone[B] in 1834; the electricity in the early trials being supposed to travel from end to end of the arrangement, but in the later investigations a distinction occasionally appearing to be made between the transmission of the effect and of the supposed fluid by the motion of whose particles that effect is produced.

[A] Philosophical Transactions, 1748.

[B] Ibid. 1834, p. 583.

1650. Electrolytic action has a remarkable bearing upon this question of the velocity of the current, especially as connected with the theory of an electric fluid or fluids. In it there is an evident transfer of power with the transfer of each particle of the anion or cathion present, to the next particles of the cathion or anion; and as the amount of power is definite, we have in this way a means of localizing as it were the force, identifying it by the particle and dealing it out in successive portions, which leads, I think, to very striking results.

1651. Suppose, for instance, that water is undergoing decomposition by the powers of a voltaic battery. Each particle of hydrogen as it moves one way, or of oxygen as it moves in the other direction, will transfer a certain amount of electrical force a.s.sociated with it in the form of chemical affinity (822. 852. 918.) onwards through a distance, which is equal to that through which the particle itself has moved. This transfer will be accompanied by a corresponding movement in the electrical forces throughout every part of the circuit formed (1627. 1634.), and its effects may be estimated, as, for instance, by the heating of a wire (853.) at any particular section of the current however distant. If the water be a cube of an inch in the side, the electrodes touching, each by a surface of one square inch, and being an inch apart, then, by the time that a tenth of it, or 25.25 grs., is decomposed, the particles of oxygen and hydrogen throughout the ma.s.s may be considered as having moved relatively to each other in opposite directions, to the amount of the tenth of an inch; i.e.

that two particles at first in combination will after the motion be the tenth of an inch apart. Other motions which occur in the fluid will not at all interfere with this result; for they have no power of accelerating or r.e.t.a.r.ding the electric discharge, and possess in fact no relation to it.

1652. The quant.i.ty of electricity in 25.25 grains of water is, according to an estimate of the force which I formerly made (861.), equal to above 24 millions of charges of a large Leyden battery; or it would have kept any length of a platina wire 1/104 of an inch in diameter red-hot for an hour and a half (853.). This result, though given only as an approximation, I have seen no reason as yet to alter, and it is confirmed generally by the experiments and results of M. Pouillet[A]. According to Mr. Wheatstone's experiments, the influence or effects of the current would appear at a distance of 576,000 miles in a second[B]. We have, therefore, in this view of the matter, on the one hand, an enormous quant.i.ty of power equal to a most destructive thunder-storm appearing instantly at the distance of 576,000 miles from its source, and on the other, a quiet effect, in producing which the power had taken an hour and a half to travel through the tenth of an inch: yet these are the equivalents to each other, being effects observed at the sections of one and the same current (1634.).

[A] Becquerel, Traite de l'Electricite, v. p. 278.

[B] Philosophical Transactions, 1834, p. 589.

1653. It is time that I should call attention to the lateral or transverse forces of the _current_. The great things which have been achieved by Oersted, Arago, Ampere, Davy, De la Rive, and others, and the high degree of simplification which has been introduced into their arrangement by the theory of Ampere, have not only done their full service in advancing most rapidly this branch of knowledge, but have secured to it such attention that there is no necessity for urging on its pursuit. I refer of course to magnetic action and its relations; but though this is the only recognised lateral action of the current, there is great reason for believing that others exist and would by their discovery reward a close search for them (951.).

1654. The magnetic or transverse action of the current seems to be in a most extraordinary degree independent of those variations or modes of action which it presents directly in its course; it consequently is of the more value to us, as it gives us a higher relation of the power than any that might have varied with each mode of discharge. This discharge, whether it be by conduction through a wire with infinite velocity (1652.), or by electrolyzation with its corresponding and exceeding slow motion (1651.), or by spark, and probably even by convection, produces a transverse magnetic action always the same in kind and direction.

1655. It has been shown by several experimenters, that whilst the discharge is of the _same kind_ the amount of lateral or magnetic force is very constant (216. 366. 367. 368. 376.). But when we wish to compare discharge of different kinds, for the important purpose of ascertaining whether the same amount of current will in its _different forms_ produce the same amount of transverse action, we find the data very imperfect. Davy noticed, that when the electric current was pa.s.sing through an aqueous solution it affected a magnetic needle[A], and Dr. Ritchie says, that the current in the electrolyte is as magnetic as that in a metallic wire[B], and has caused water to revolve round a magnet as a wire carrying the current would revolve.

[A] Philosophical Transactions, 1821, p. 426.

[B] Ibid. 1832, p. 294.

1656. Disruptive discharge produces its magnetic effects: a strong spark, pa.s.sed transversely to a steel needle, will magnetise it as well as if the electricity of the spark were conducted by a metallic wire occupying the line of discharge; and Sir H. Davy has shown that the discharge of a voltaic battery in vacuo is affected and has motion given to it by approximated magnets[A].

[A] Philosophical Transactions, 1821, p. 427.

1657. Thus the three very different modes of discharge, namely, conduction, electrolyzation, and disruptive discharge, agree in producing the important transverse phenomenon of magnetism. Whether convection or carrying discharge will produce the same phenomenon has not been determined, and the few experiments I have as yet had time to make do not enable me to answer in the affirmative.

1658. Having arrived at this point in the consideration of the current and in the endeavour to apply its phenomena as tests of the truth or fallacy of the theory of induction which I have ventured to set forth, I am now very much tempted to indulge in a few speculations respecting its lateral action and its possible connexion with the transverse condition of the lines of ordinary induction (1165, 1304.)[A]. I have long sought and still seek for an effect or condition which shall be to statical electricity what magnetic force is to current electricity (1411.); for as the lines of discharge are a.s.sociated with a certain transverse effect, so it appeared to me impossible but that the lines of tension or of inductive action, which of necessity precede that discharge, should also have their correspondent transverse condition or effect (951.).

[A] Refer for further investigations to 1709.--1736.--_Dec. 1838._