Page:The fundamental laws of electrolytic conduction.djvu/45

 to exert an influence over the quantity of the matters evolved during electrolytic action, one would expect them to be present when electrodes of different substances, and possessing very different chemical affinities for such matters, were used. Platina has no power in dilute sulphuric acid of combining with the oxygen at the anode, though the latter be evolved in the nascent state against it. Copper, on the other hand, immediately unites with the oxygen, as the electric current sets it free from the hydrogen; and zinc is not only able to combine with it, but can, without any help from the electricity, abstract it directly from the water, at the same time setting torrents of hydrogen free. Yet in cases where these three substances were used as the positive electrodes, in three similar portions of the same dilute sulphuric acid, specific gravity 1.336, precisely the same quantity of water was decomposed by the electric current, and precisely the same quantity of hydrogen set free at the cathodes of the three solutions.

The experiment was made thus: Portions of the dilute sulphuric acid were put into three basins. Three volta-electrometer tubes, of the form Figs. 1, 3, were filled with the same acid, and one inverted in each basin. A zinc plate, connected with the positive end of a voltaic battery, was dipped into the first basin, forming the positive electrode there, the hydrogen, which was abundantly evolved from it by the direct action of the acid, being allowed to escape. A copper plate, which dipped into the acid of the second basin, was connected with the negative electrode of the first basin; and a platina plate, which dipped into the acid of the third basin, was connected with the negative electrode of the second basin. The negative electrode of the third basin was connected with a volta-electrometer, and that with the negative end of the voltaic battery.

Immediately that the circuit was complete, the electrochemical action commenced in all the vessels. The hydrogen still rose in apparently undiminished quantities from the positive zinc electrode in the first basin. No oxygen was evolved at the positive copper electrode in the second basin, but a sulphate of copper was formed there; whilst in the third basin the positive platina electrode evolved pure oxygen gas, and was itself unaffected. But in all the basins the hydrogen liberated at the negative platina electrodes was the same in quantity, and the same with the volume of hydrogen evolved in the