The correlation of physical forces: being the substance of a course of lectures delivered in the London Institution, in the year 1843 / by W.R. Grove.

  • Grove, W. R. (William Robert), 1811-1896.
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The correlation of physical forces: being the substance of a course of lectures delivered in the London Institution, in the year 1843 / by W.R. Grove. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    it determines; thus, although gunpowder touched with an ignited wire, subsequently carries on its own combustion or chemical combination, independently of the original source of heat, yet the chemical affinities of the first portion touched, must be exalted by, and at the cost of the heat of the wire, for to disturb even an unstable equilibrium, re- quires a force in direct relation with those which maintain equilibrium. Electricity is that affection of matter or mode of force, which most distinctly and beautifully relates other modes of force, and exhibits, to a great extent, in a quantitative form, its own relation with them, and their reciprocal rela- tions with it, and with each other. From the manner in which the peculiar force called Electricity, is apparently transmitted through certain bodies, such as metallic wires, the term current is commonly used to denote its progressive direction. It is very difficult to present to the mind any theory which will give a definite conception of its modus agendi; the early theories regard its phenomena, as produced either by a single fluid idio-repulsive, but attractive of all matter, or else as produced by two fluids, each idio-re- pulsive but attractive of the other. No substantive theory has been proposed other than these two, but although this is the case, I think I shall not be unsupported by many who have attentively studied electrical phenomena, in view- ing them as resulting not from the action of a fluid or fluids, but as a molecular polarization of ordinary matter, or as matter acting by attraction and repulsion in a definite direction. Thus, the transmission of the Voltaic current in liquids, is viewed by Grotthus as a series of chemical affinities acting in a definite direction; in the electrolysis of water, for instance, a molecule of oxygen is supposed to be displaced by the exalted attraction of the neighbouring elec-