OCR Text |
Show 66 Additional Notes. accumulated electricity, as it passes with greater velocity than the spontaneous accumulations of it, will readily permeate the muscles or other moist parts of animal bodies; whereas the spontaneous accumulations of electricity seem to require the best of all conductors, as animal nerves, to facilitate their passage. · 4. In the Galvanic pile of Volta this electric shock becomes so much increased, as to pass by less perfect conductors, and to give shocks to the arms of the conducting person, if the cuticle of his hamls be moistened, and even to show sparks like the coated jar; which appears to be effected in this manner. When. a plate of silver is laid horizontally on a plate of zinc, the plate of a1r between th em becomes charO'ed like a coated jar; as the silver, naturally possessing more vitreou; electric ether, repels the vitreous ether, which the zinc possesses in less quantity, and .attracts the resinous ether of the zinc. Whence the inferior surface of the plate of zinc abOtmds n ow with vitreous ethe·r, and its upper surface with resinous ether. Beneath this pair of plates lay a cloth moistened with water, or with some better conductor, as salt and water, or a slight acid mixed with water' or volatile alcali of ammoniac mixed with water, and this . vitreous electric ether on the lower surface of the zinc plate will be given to the second silver plate which lies Leneath it; and thus this second silver plate will possess not only its own natural vitreous atmosphere, which was denser or in greater quantity than that of the zinc plate next beneath it, but now acquires an addition of vitreous ether from the zinc plate above it, conducted to it through the moist cloth. This then will repel more vitreous ether from the second zinc plate into the third silver one; and so on till the plates of air between the zincs and silvers are all charged, and each stronger and stronger, as they descend in the pile. If the reader still prefers the Franklinian theory of positive and negative electricity, he will please to put the word positive for vitreous, and negative for resinous, and he will find the theory of the Galvanic pile equally thus accounted for. 5. When a Galvanic pile is thus placed, and a communication between the two ends of it is made by wires, so that the electric sbocks pass through water, the water becomes decomposed in some measure, Chemical Theory qf Electricity and Magnetism. 67 and oxyge.n is liberated from it at the point of one wire, .and hydrogen ~t the pomt of the other; and this though a syphon of water be mterp~se cl between them. This curious circumstance seems to evince the existence of two electric ethers, which enter the water at different ends of ~he syphoi~, and have chemical affinities to the component parts of It.; the r esmous ether sets at liberty the hydrogen at one end, and the vitreous ether the oxygen at the other end of the conducting medium. Hence it must appear, that the longer the Galvanic pile, or the greater the number of the alternate pieces of silver and zinc that it consists of, the stronger will be the Galvanic shock; but there is another circumstance ditficult to explain, which is the perpetual decomposition of water by the Galvanic pile; when water is made the conducting medium between the two extremities of the pile. As no conductors of electri-city are absolutely perfect, there must b~ produced a certain accumulation of vitreous ether on one side of each charged plat~ of the Galvanic pile, and of resinous ether on the other side of i~ before the discharge takes place, even though the conducting medium be in apparent contact. When the discharge does take place, the whole of the accumulated electricity explodes and vanishes ; and then an instant of time is required for the silver and zinc aO'ain to attract from the air, or other bodies in their vicinity, . 0 their spontaneous natural atmospheres, and tJ1en another discharge ensues; and so repeatedly and perpetually till the surface of one of the metallic plates becomes so much oxydated or calcined, that it ceases to act. Hence a perpetual motion may be said to be produced, with an incessant decomposition of water into the two gasses of oxygen and hydrogen; which must probably be constantly pr~ceeding on all m~ist · surfaces, where a chain of electric conductors exists, surrounded wrth different proportions of the two electric ethers. Whence the ?easeless liberation of oxyO'en from the water has oxydated or calcmed the b f . ores of metals near the surface of the earth, as of manganese, o zmc into lapis calaminaris, of iron into various ~chres, and other calciform ores. From this source also the corrosiOn of some metals may be traced, when they are immersed in water in ~he vicinity of each |