Page:On Faraday's Lines of Force.pdf/35

Rh data for the direct proof of the unknown state, have not, I think, been made the subject of mathematical investigation. Perhaps it may be thought that the quantitative determinations of the various phenomena are not sufficiently rigorous to be made the basis of a mathematical theory; Faraday, however, has not contented himself with simply stating the numerical results of his experiments and leaving the law to be discovered by calculation. Where he has perceived a law he has at once stated it, in terms as unambiguous as those of pure mathematics; and if the mathematician, receiving this as a. physical truth, deduces from it other laws capable of being tested by experiment, he has merely assisted the physicist in arranging his own ideas, which is confessedly a necessary step in scientific induction.

In the following investigation, therefore, the laws established by Faraday will be assumed as true, and it will be shown that by following out his speculations other and more general laws can be deduced from them. If it should then appear that these laws, originally devised to include one set of phenomena, may be generalized so as to extend to phenomena of a different class, these mathematical connexions may suggest to physicists the means of establishing physical connexions; and thus mere speculation may be turned to account in experimental science.

On Quantity and Intensity as Properties of Electric Currents.

It is found that certain effects of an electric current are equal at whatever part of the circuit they are estimated. The quantities of water or of any other electrolyte decomposed at two different sections of the same circuit, are always found to be equal or equivalent, however different the material and form of the circuit may be at the two sections. The magnetic effect of a conducting wire is also found to be independent of the form or material of the wire in the same circuit. There is therefore an electrical effect which is equal at every section of the circuit. If we conceive of the conductor as the channel along which a ﬂuid is constrained to move, then the quantity of ﬂuid transmitted by each section will be the same, and we may deﬁne the quantity of an electric current to be the quantity of electricity which passes across a complete section of the current in unit of time. We may for the present measure quantity of electricity by the quantity of water which it would decompose in unit of time.