Page:Thomson1881.djvu/1

 § 1. IN the interesting experiments recently made by Mr. Crookes (Phil. Trans. 1879, parts 1 and 2) and Dr. Goldstein (Phil. Mag. Sept. and Oct. 1880) on "Electric Discharges in High Vacua," particles of matter highly charged with electricity and moving with great velocities form a prominent feature in the phenomena; and a large portion of the investigations consists of experiments on the action of such particles on each other, and their behaviour when under the influence of a magnet. It seems therefore to be of some interest, both as a test of the theory and as a guide to future experiments, to take some theory of electrical action and find what, according to it, is the force existing between two moving electrified bodies, what is the magnetic force produced by such a moving body, and in what way the body is affected by a magnet. The following paper is an attempt to solve these problems, taking as the basis Maxwell's theory that variations in the electric displacement in a dielectric produce effects analogous to those produced by ordinary currents flowing through conductors.

For simplicity of calculation we shall suppose all the moving bodies to be spherical.