Page:ScienceAndHypothesis1905.djvu/268

 acted upon by a single force but by a force and a couple, and this is what gave rise to the celebrated polemic between Bertrand and Helmholtz. Helmholtz replaces Ampère's hypothesis by the following:—Two elements of current always admit of an electro-dynamic potential, depending solely upon their position and orientation; and the work of the forces that they exercise one on the other is equal to the variation of this potential. Thus Helmholtz can no more do without hypothesis than Ampère, but at least he does not do so without explicitly announcing it. In the case of closed currents, which alone are accessible to experiment, the two theories agree; in all other cases they differ. In the first place, contrary to what Ampère supposed, the force which seems to act on the movable portion of a closed current is not the same as that acting on the movable portion if it were isolated and if it constituted an open current. Let us return to the circuit C', of which we spoke above, and which was formed of a movable wire sliding on a fixed wire. In the only experiment that can be made the movable portion αβ is not isolated, but is part of a closed circuit. When it passes from AB to A'B', the total electro-dynamic potential varies for two reasons. First, it has a slight increment because the potential of A'B' with respect to the circuit C is not the same as that of AB; secondly, it has a second increment because it must be increased by the potentials of the elements