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THE

LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND DUBLIN

PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE

AND

JOURNAL OF SCIENCE.

[SIXTH SERIES.]

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NOVEMBER 1908.

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LIX. A Revision of the Fundamental Laws of matter and Energy. By Gilbert N. Lewis. Ph.D., Associate Professor of Physical Chemistry, Massacussets Institute of Technology, Boston^[1].

RECENT publications of Einstein^[2] and Comstock^[3] on the relation of mass to energy have emboldened me to publish certain views which I have entertained on this subject and which a few years ago appeared purely speculative, but which have been so far corroborated by recent advances in experimental and theoretical physics that it seems desirable to subject these views to a strict logical development, although in so doing it will be necessary to modify those fundamental principles of the mechanics of ponderable matter which have remained unaltered since the time of Newton.

The recent experiments which indicate a change in the mass of an electron with the speed, together with the phenomenon of radioactivity, have in some minds created a doubt as to the exact validity of some of the most general laws of nature. In the following pages I shall attempt to show that we may construct a simple system of mechanics which is consistent with all known experimental facts, and which rests upon the assumption of the truth of the three great conservation laws,

1. Communicated by the author.
2. Ann. Phys. xviii. p. 639 (1905).
3. Phil. Mag xv. p. 1 (1908)

Phil. Mag. S. 6. Vol. 16. No. 95. Nov. 1908.