Page:A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism - Volume 1.djvu/352

310 sufficient to give this process a certain degree of direction, and so to produce the currents of the ions and the electric current, which is part of the same phenomenon. Within the electrolyte, however, the ions are never set free in finite quantity, and it is this liberation of the ions which requires a finite electromotive force. At the electrodes the ions accumulate, for the successive portions of the ions, as they arrive at the electrodes, instead of finding molecules of the opposite ion ready to combine with them, are forced into company with molecules of their own kind, with which they cannot combine. The electromotive force required to produce this effect is of finite magnitude, and forms an opposing electromotive force which produces a reversed current when other electromotive forces are removed. When this reversed electromotive force, owing to the accumulation of the ions at the electrode, is observed, the electrodes are said to be Polarized.

258.] One of the best methods of determining whether a body is or is not an electrolyte is to place it between platinum electrodes and to pass a current through it for some time, and then, disengaging the electrodes from the voltaic battery, and connecting them with a galvanometer, to observe whether a reverse current, due to polarization of the electrodes, passes through the galvanometer. Such a current, being due to accumulation of different substances on the two electrodes, is a proof that the substance has been electrolytically decomposed by the original current from the battery. This method can often be applied where it is difficult, by direct chemical methods, to detect the presence of the products of decomposition at the electrodes. See Art. 271.

259.] So far as we have gone the theory of electrolysis appears very satisfactory. It explains the electric current, the nature of which we do not understand, by means of the currents of the material components of the electrolyte, the motion of which, though not visible to the eye, is easily demonstrated. It gives a clear explanation, as Faraday has shewn, why an electrolyte which conducts in the liquid state is a non-conductor when solidified, for unless the molecules can pass from one part to another no electrolytic conduction can take place, so that the substance must be in a liquid state, either by fusion or by solution, in order to be a conductor.

But if we go on, and assume that the molecules of the ions within the electrolyte are actually charged with certain definite quantities of electricity, positive and negative, so that the