Page:Experimental researches in electricity.djvu/107

Rh uncombinable, and immiscible condition passes away into the surrounding medium. The sulphur is evidently determined in these opposite directions by its opposite chemical relations to oxygen and silver; and it is to such relations generally that I have referred all electro-chemical phenomena. Where they do not exist, no electro-chemical action can take place. Where they are strongest, it is most powerful; where they are reversed, the direction of transfer of the substance is reversed with them.

289. Water may be considered as one of those substances which can be made to pass to either pole. When the poles are immersed in dilute sulphuric acid (263), acid passes towards the positive pole, and water towards the negative pole; but  when they are immersed in dilute alkali, the alkali passes towards the negative pole, and water towards the positive pole.

290. Nitrogen is another substance which is considered as determinable to either pole ; but in consequence of the numerous compounds which it forms, some of which pass to one pole, and some to the other, I have not always found it easy to determine the true circumstances of its appearance. A pure strong solution of ammonia is so bad a conductor of electricity that it is scarcely more decomposable than pure water; but if sulphate of ammonia be dissolved in it, then decomposition takes place very well; nitrogen almost pure, and in some cases quite, is evolved at the positive pole, and hydrogen at the negative pole.

291. On the other hand, if a strong solution of nitrate of ammonia be decomposed, oxygen appears at the positive pole, and hydrogen, with sometimes nitrogen, at the negative pole. If fused nitrate of ammonia be employed, hydrogen appears at the negative pole, mingled with a little nitrogen. Strong nitric acid yields plenty of oxygen at the positive pole, but no gas (only nitrous acid), at the negative pole. Weak nitric acid yields the oxygen and hydrogen of the water present, the acid apparently remaining unchanged. Strong nitric acid with nitrate of ammonia dissolved in it, yields a gas at the negative pole, of which the greater part is hydrogen, but apparently a little nitrogen is present. I believe that in some of these cases a little nitrogen appeared at the negative pole. I suspect, however, that in all these, and in all former cases, the appearance of the nitrogen at the positive or negative pole is entirely