Page:Experimental researches in electricity.djvu/184

158 i.e. an electrolyte, must consist of two ions, and must also render them up during the act of decomposition.

565. v. There is but one electrolyte composed of the same two elementary ions; at least such appears to be the fact (432), dependent upon a law, that only single electro-chemical equivalents of elementary ions can go to the electrodes, and not multiples.

566. vi. A body not decomposable when alone, as boracic acid, is not directly decomposable by the electric current when in combination (515). It may act as an ion going wholly to the anode or cathode, but does not yield up its elements, except occasionally by a secondary action. Perhaps it is superfluous for me to point out that this proposition has no relation to such cases as that of water, which, by the presence of other bodies, is rendered a better conductor of electricity, and therefore is more freely decomposed.

567. vii. The nature of the substance of which the electrode is formed, provided it be a conductor, causes no difference in the electro-decomposition, either in kind or degree (542, 548): but it seriously influences, by secondary action (479), the state in which the ions finally appear. Advantage may be taken of this principle in combining and collecting such ions as, if evolved in their free state, would be unmanageable.

568. viii. A substance which, being used as the electrode, can combine with the ion evolved against it, is also, I believe, an ion, and combines, in such cases, in the quantity represented by its electro-chemical equivalent. All the experiments I have made agree with this view; and it seems to me, at present, to result as a necessary consequence. Whether, in the secondary actions that take place, where the ion acts, not upon the matter of the electrode, but on that which is around it in the liquid (479), the same consequence follows, will require more extended investigation to determine.

569. ix. Compound ions are not necessarily composed of electro-chemical equivalents of simple ions. For instance, sulphuric acid, boracic acid, phosphoric acid, are ions, but not electrolytes, i.e. not composed of electro-chemical equivalents of simple ions.