Page:Scientific Memoirs, Vol. 2 (1841).djvu/504

which belongs to the existence of the particles, which therefore they cannot part with without at the same time ceasing to exist, the electricity bound to the bodies, or latent electricity, and free electricity, that which is not requisite for the existence of the bodies in their individuality, and which therefore can pass from one element to the other, without the individual parts being on that account compelled to exchange their specific mode of existence for another.

32. From these suppositions advanced in electro-chemistry, in connexion with what was stated in § 30, respecting the mode in which galvanic circuits exert a different mechanical force on discs of different electrical nature, it immediately follows that when a disc belonging to the circuit is composed of constituents of dissimilar electric value, the neighbouring discs will exert on these two constituents a dissimilar attractive or repulsive action, which will excite in them a tendency to separate, which, when it is able to overcome their coherence, must produce an actual separation of constituents. This power of the galvanic circuit, with which it tends to decompose the particles into their constituents, we will call its decomposing force, and now proceed to determine more minutely the magnitude of this force.

Employing for this purpose all the signs introduced in § 30, we will, moreover, imagine each disc to be composed of two constituents, $\mathrm {A}$ and $\mathrm {B}$, and designate by $m$ and $n$ the latent electroscopic forces of the constituents $\mathrm {A}$ and $\mathrm {B}$, supposing the disc $\mathrm {M}$ to be occupied solely by one of the two, entirely excluding the other, in the same manner as $u$ represents the free electroscopic force present in the same disc, and equally diffused over both constituents. If we now admit, in order to simplify the calculation, that the two constituents $\mathrm {A}$ and $\mathrm {B}$, before and after their union, constantly occupy the same space, and designate the latent electroscopic force, corresponding to each chemical equivalent, contained in the disc $\mathrm {M}$, and proceeding from the constituent $\mathrm {A}$, by $mz$, then $n(1-z)$ expresses the latent electroscopic force present in the same disc $\mathrm {M}$, but originating from the constituent $\mathrm {B}$: for the intensity of the force diffused over a body decreases in the same proportion as the space which the body occupies becomes greater, because by the increased distance of the particles from each other the sum of their actions, restricted to a definite extent, is diminished in