Page:Experimental researches in electricity.djvu/238

212 evident consequence, that if matters are so arranged that two sets of affinities, in place of being opposed to each other as in figs. 33, 36 (615, 626), are made to act in conformity, then, instead of either interfering with the other, it will rather assist it. This is simply the case of two voltaic pairs of metals arranged so as to form one circuit. In such arrangements the activity of the whole is known to be increased, and when ten, or a hundred, or any larger number of such alternations are placed in conformable association with each other, the power of the whole becomes proportionably exalted, and we obtain that magnificent instrument of philosophic research, the voltaic battery.

726. But it is evident from the principles of definite action already laid down, that the quantity of electricity in the current cannot be increased with the increase of the quantity of metal oxidised and dissolved at each new place of chemical action. A single pair of zinc and platina plates throws as much electricity into the form of a current, by the oxidation of 32.5 grains of the zinc (603), as would be circulated by the same alteration of a thousand times that quantity, or nearly five pounds of metal oxidised at the surface of the zinc plates of a thousand pairs placed in regular battery order. For it is evident that the electricity which passes across the acid from the zinc to the platina in the first cell, and which has been associated with, or even evolved by, the decomposition of a definite portion of water in that cell, cannot pass from the zinc to the platina across the acid in the second cell, without the decomposition of the same quantity of water there, and the oxidation of the same quantity of zinc by it (659, 684). The same result recurs in every other cell; the electro-chemical equivalent of water must be decomposed in each, before the current can pass through it; for the quantity of electricity passed and the quantity of electrolyte decomposed must be the equivalents of each other. The action in each cell, therefore, is not to increase the quantity set in motion in any one cell, but to aid in urging forward that quantity, the passing of which is consistent with the oxidation of its own zinc; and in this way it exalts that peculiar property of the current which we endeavour to express by the term intensity, without increasing the quantity beyond that which is proportionate to the quantity of zinc oxidised in any single cell of the series.

727. To prove this, I arranged ten pairs of amalgamated zinc and platina plates with dilute sulphuric acid in the form of a battery. On completing the circuit, all the pairs acted and