Page:A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism - Volume 2.djvu/364

332 The instrument originally constructed by Weber is described in his Elektrodynamische Maasbestimmungen. It was intended for the measurement of small currents, and therefore both the fixed and the suspended coils consisted of many windings, and the suspended coil occupied a larger part of the space within the fixed coil than in the instrument of the British Association, which was primarily intended as a standard instrument, with which more sensitive instruments might be compared. The experiments which he made with it furnish the most complete experimental proof of the accuracy of Ampère's formula as applied to closed currents, and form an important part of the researches by which Weber has raised the numerical determination of electrical quantities to a very high rank as regards precision.

Weber's form of the electrodynamometer, in which one coil is suspended within another, and is acted on by a couple tending to turn it about a vertical axis, is probably the best fitted for absolute measurements. A method of calculating the constants of such an arrangement is given in Art. 697.

726.] If, however, we wish, by means of a feeble current, to produce a considerable electromagnetic force, it is better to place the suspended coil parallel to the fixed coil, and to make it capable of motion to or from it.

The suspended coil in Dr. Joule's current-weigher, Fig. 56, is horizontal, and capable of vertical motion, and the force between it and the fixed coil is estimated by the weight which must be added to or removed from the coil in order to bring it to the same relative position with respect to the fixed coil that it has when no current passes.

The suspended coil may also be fastened to the extremity of the horizontal arm of a torsion-balance, and may be placed between two fixed coils, one of which attracts it, while the other repels it, as in Fig. 57.

By arranging the coils as described in Art. 729, the force acting on the suspended coil may be made nearly uniform within a small distance of the position of equilibrium.

Another coil may be fixed to the other extremity of the arm of the torsion-balance and placed between two fixed coils. If the