Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1

[A] Annales de Chimie, tom. xxiii. p. 440; tom. xxiv. p, 380.

612. MM. Dulong and Thenard express themselves with great caution on the theory of this action; but, referring to the decomposing power of metals on ammonia when heated to temperatures not sufficient alone to affect the alkali, they remark that those metals which in this case are most efficacious, are the least so in causing the combination of oxygen and hydrogen; whilst platina, gold, &c., which have least power of decomposing ammonia, have most power of combining the elements of water:--from which they are led to believe, that amongst gases, some tend to unite under the influence of metals, whilst others tend to separate, and that this property varies in opposite directions with the different metals. At the close of their second paper they observe, that the action is of a kind that cannot be connected with any known theory; and though it is very remarkable that the effects are transient, like those of most electrical actions, yet they state that the greater number of the results observed by them are inexplicable, by supposing them to be of a purely electric origin.

613. Dr. Fusinieri has also written on this subject, and given a theory which he considers as sufficient to account for the phenomena[A]. He expresses the immediate cause thus: "The platina determines upon its surface a continual renovation of concrete laminae of the combustible substance of the gases or vapours, which flowing over it are burnt, pass away, and are renewed: this combustion at the surface raises and sustains the temperature of the metal." The combustible substance, thus reduced into imperceptible laminae, of which the concrete parts are in contact with the oxygen, is presumed to be in a state combinable with the oxygen at a much lower temperature than when it is in the gaseous state, and more in analogy with what is called the nascent condition. That combustible gases should lose their elastic state, and become concrete, assuming the form of exceedingly attenuated but solid strata, is considered as proved by facts, some of which are quoted in the Giornale di Fisica for 1824[B]; and though the theory requires that they should assume this state at high temperatures, and though the similar films of aqueous and other matter are dissipated by the action of heat, still the facts are considered as justifying the conclusion against all opposition of reasoning.

[A] Giornale di Fisica, &c., 1825, tom. viii. p. 259.

[B] pp. 138, 371.

614. The power or force which makes combustible gas or vapour abandon its elastic state in contact with a solid, that it may cover the latter with a thin stratum of its own proper substance, is considered as being neither attraction nor affinity. It is able also to extend liquids and solids in concrete laminae over the surface of the acting solid body, and consists in a repulsion, which is developed from the parts of the solid body by the simple fact of attenuation, and is highest when the attenuation is most complete. The force has a progressive development, and acts most powerfully, or at first, in the direction in which the dimensions of the attenuated mass decrease, and then in the direction of the angles or corners which from any cause may exist on the surface. This force not only causes spontaneous diffusion of gases and other substances over the surface, but is considered as very elementary in its nature, and competent to account for all the phenomena of capillarity, chemical affinity, attraction of aggregation, rarefaction, ebullition, volatilization, explosion, and other thermometric effects, as well as inflammation, detonation, &c. &c. It is considered as a form of heat to which the term native calorie is given, and is still further viewed as the principle of the two electricities and the two magnetisms.