Page:A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism - Volume 2.djvu/180

148 in opposite directions neutralize each other. If, instead of two wires side by side, a wire be insulated in the middle of a metal

Fig. 26.

tube, and if the current pass through the wire and back by the tube, the action outside the tube is not only approximately but accurately null. This principle is of great importance in the construction of electric apparatus, as it affords the means of conveying the current to and from any galvanometer or other instrument in such a way that no electromagnetic effect is produced by the current on its passage to and from the instrument. In practice it is generally sufficient to bind the wires together, care being taken that they are kept perfectly insulated from each other, but where they must pass near any sensitive part of the apparatus it is better to make one of the conductors a tube and the other a wire inside it. See Art. 683.

506.] In Ampère's second experiment one of the wires is bent and crooked with a number of small sinuosities, but so that in every part of its course it remains very near the straight wire. A current, flowing through the crooked wire and back again through the straight wire, is found to be without influence on the astatic balance. This proves that the effect of the current running through any crooked part of the wire is equivalent to the same current running in the straight line joining its extremities, provided the crooked line is in no part of its course far from the straight one. Hence any small element of a circuit is equivalent to two or more component elements, the relation between the component elements and the resultant element being the same as that between component and resultant displacements or velocities.

507.] In the third experiment a conductor capable of moving