Page:Experimental researches in electricity.djvu/276

250 the clean iron (831). The oxide of iron was at first in the least degree positive, and then immediately neutral. This circuit, then, like the former, gave no current at common temperatures; but it differed much from it in conducting power, being a very excellent conductor of a thermo current, the oxide of iron not offering that obstruction to the passage of the current which the peculiar iron did (831, 832). Hence scale oxide of iron and platinum produce no current by contact, the third substance in the proof circuit being nitrous acid; and so the result agrees with that obtained in the former case, where that third substance was solution of sulphuret of potassium.

836. In using nitrous acid it is necessary that certain precautions be taken, founded on the following effect. If a circuit be made with the green nitrous acid, platinum wires, and a galvanometer, in a few seconds all traces of a current due to first disturbances will disappear; but if one wire be raised into the air and instantly returned to its first position, a current is formed, and that wire is negative, across the electrolyte, to the other. If one wire be dipped only a small distance into the acid, as for instance one-fourth of an inch, then the raising that wire not more than one-eighth of an inch and instantly restoring it, will produce the same effect as before. The effect is due to the evaporation of the nitrous acid from the exposed wire (925). I may perhaps return to it hereafter, but wish at present only to give notice of the precaution that is required in consequence, namely, to retain the immersed wires undisturbed during the experiment.

837. Proceeding on the facts made known by Schœnbein respecting the relation of iron and nitric acid, I used that acid as the fluid in a voltaic current formed with iron and platinum. Pure nitric acid is so deficient in conducting power (805) that it may be supposed capable of stopping any current due to the effect of contact between the platinum and iron; and it is further objectionable in these experiments, because, acting feebly on the iron, it produces a chemically excited current, which may be considered as mingling its effect with that of contact: whereas the object at present is, by excluding such chemical action, to lay bare the influence of contact alone. Still the results with it are consistent with the more perfect ones already described; for in a circuit of iron, platinum, and nitric acid, the joint effects of the chemical action on the iron and the contact of iron and platinum, being to produce a current