VI. Experimental researches in electricity.-Seventh Series

Abstract

The theory which I believe to be a true expression of the facts of electrochemical decomposition, and which I have therefore detailed in a former series of these Researches, is so much at variance with those previously advanced, that I find the greatest difficulty in stating results, as I think, correctly, whilst limited to the use of terms which are current with a certain accepted meaning. Of this kind is the term pole, with its prefixes of positive and negative, and the attached ideas of attraction and repulsion. The general phraseology is that the positive pole attracts oxygen, acids, &c., or more cautiously, that it determines their evolution upon the surface; and that the negative pole acts in an equal manner upon hydrogen, combustibles, metals, and bases. According to my view, the determining force is not at the poles, but within the decomposing body; and the oxygen and acids are rendered at the negative extremity of that body, whilst hydrogen, metals, &c., are evolved at the positive extremity (518. 524.). To avoid, therefore, confusion and circumlocution, and for the sake of greater precision of expression than I can otherwise obtain, I have deliberately considered the subject with two friends, and writh their assistance and concurrence in framing them, I purpose henceforward using certain other terms, which I will now define. The poles, as they are usually called, are only the doors or ways by which the electric current passes into and out of the decomposing body (556.); and they of course, when in contact with that body, are the limits of its extent in the direction of the current. The term has been generally applied to the metal surfaces in contact with the decom­posing substance; but whether philosophers generally would also apply it to surfaces of air (465. 471.) and water (493.), against which I have effected electro­chemical decomposition, is subject to doubt. 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.