Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/258

 whole length of the liquid. This subject has been studied very carefully, and for a great number of liquids, by Professor Hittorff, of Münster, and Professor G. Wiedemann, of Leipsic.

Professor F. Kohlrausch, of Würzburg, has brought to light the very important fact that, in diluted solutions of salts, including hydrates of acids and hydrates of caustic alkalies, every atom under the influence of currents of the same density moves on with its own peculiar velocity, independently of other atoms moving at the same time in the same or in opposite directions. The total amount of chemical motion in every section of the fluid is represented by the sum of the equivalents of the cation gone forward and of the anion gone backward, in the same way as in the dualistic theory of electricity, and the total amount of electricity flowing through a section of the conductor corresponds to the sum of positive electricity going forward and negative electricity going backward.

This established, Faraday's law tells us that, through each section of an electrolytic conductor, we have always equivalent electrical and chemical motion. The same definite quantity of either positive or negative electricity moves always with each univalent ion, or with every unit of affinity of a multivalent ion, and accompanies it during all its motions through the interior of the electrolytic fluid. This we may call the electric charge of the atom.

Now, the most startling result, perhaps, of Faraday's law is this: If we accept the hypothesis that the elementary substances are composed of atoms, we can not avoid concluding that electricity also, positive as well as negative, is divided into definite elementary portions, which behave like atoms of electricity. As long as it moves about on the electrolytic liquid, each atom remains united with its electric equivalent or equivalents. At the surface of the electrodes decomposition can take place if there is sufficient electro-motive power, and then the atoms give off their electric charges and become electrically neutral.

Now arises the question, Are all these relations between electricity and chemical combination limited to that class of bodies which we know as electrolytes? In order to produce a current of sufficient strength to collect enough of the products of decomposition without producing too much heat in the electrolyte, the substance which we try to decompose ought not to have too much resistance against the current. But this resistance may be very great, and the motion of the ions may be very slow—so slow indeed that we should need to allow it to go on for hundreds of years before we should be able to collect even traces of the products of decomposition; nevertheless, all the essential attributes of the process of electrolysis could subsist. If you connect an electrified conductor with one of the electrodes of a cell filled with oil of turpentine, the other with the earth, you will find that the electricity of the conductor is discharged unmistakably more