Annals of Electricity, Magnetism, and Chemistry: And Guardian of Experimental Science, Volume 1

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William Sturgeon
Sherwood, Gilbert, and Piper., 1837
 

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Page 340 - The chemical power of a current of electricity is in direct proportion to the absolute quantity of electricity which passes (377.).
Page 363 - ... the results prove that the quantity of electricity which, being naturally associated with the particles of matter, gives them their combining power, is able, when thrown into a current, to separate those particles from their state of combination ; or, in other words, that the electricity which decomposes, and that which is evolved by the decomposition of, a certain quantity of matter, are alike.
Page 305 - Researches, also, to class bodies together according to certain relations derived from their electrical actions (822.); and wishing to express those relations without at the same time involving the expression of any hypothetical views, I intend using the following names and terms. Many bodies are decomposed directly by the electric current, their elements being set free; these I propose to call electrolytes.^1 Water, therefore, is an electrolyte.
Page 281 - ... terminated by cups of mercury, are connected by a copper wire not more than a foot in length, no spark is perceived when the connection is either formed or broken ; but if a wire thirty or forty feet long be used instead of the short wire, though no spark will be perceptible when the connection is made, yet when it is broken by drawing one end of the wire from its cup of mercury, a vivid spark is produced.
Page 306 - I propose to distinguish such bodies by calling those onions^ which go to the anode of the decomposing body; and those passing to the cathode, cations^; and when I have occasion to speak of these together, I shall call them ions. Thus, the chloride of lead is an electrolyte, and when electrolyzed evolves the two ions, chlorine and lead, the former being an anion, and the latter a cation.
Page 341 - The tube was suspended by a piece of platina wire, so that the heat of a spirit-lamp could be applied to it. Recently fused protochloride of tin was introduced in sufficient quantity to occupy, when melted, about...
Page 304 - In place of the term pole, I propose using that of Electrode*, and I mean thereby that substance, or rather surface, whether of air, water, metal, or any other body, which bounds the extent of the decomposing matter in the direction of the electric current.
Page 305 - Finally, I require. a term to express those bodies which can pass to the electrodes, or, as they are usually called, the poles. Substances are frequently spoken of as being electro-negative or electro-positive, according as they go under the supposed influence of a direct attraction to the positive...
Page 357 - I have not stated the length of wire used, because I find by experiment, as would be expected in theory, that it is indifferent. The same quantity of electricity which, passed in a given time, can heat an inch of platina wire of a certain diameter red hot, can also heat a hundred, a thousand, or any length of the same wire to the game degree, provided the cooling circumstances are the same for every part in all cases.
Page 358 - ... that if the electrical power which holds the elements of a grain of water in combination, or which makes a grain of oxygen and hydrogen in the right proportions unite into water when they are made to combine, could be thrown into the condition of a current, it would exactly equal the current required for the separation of that grain of water into its elements again. 856. This view of the subject gives an almost overwhelming idea of the extraordinary quantity or degree of electric power which...

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