Page:The fundamental laws of electrolytic conduction.djvu/54

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MEMOIRS ON THE FUNDAMENTAL

The series of numbers representing electrochemical equivalents must, like those expressing the ordinary equivalents of chemically acting bodies, remain subject to the continual correction of experiment and sound reasoning.

I give the following brief table of ions and their electrochemical equivalents, rather as a specimen of a first attempt than as anything that can supply the want, which must very quickly be felt, of a full and complete tabular account of this class of bodies. Looking forward to such a table as of extreme utility (if well constructed) in developing the intimate relation of ordinary chemical affinity to electrical actions, and identifying the two, not to the imagination merely, but to the conviction of the senses and a sound judgment, I may be allowed to express a hope, that the endeavor will always be to make it a table of real, and not hypothetical, electrochemical equivalents; for we shall else overrun the facts, and lose all sight and consciousness of the knowledge lying directly in our path.

The equivalent numbers do not profess to be exact, and are taken almost entirely from the chemical results of other philosophers in whom I could repose more confidence, as to these points, than in myself.

TABLE OF IONS
ANIONS
Oxygen 8 Phosphoric acid 35.7
Chlorine 35.5 Carbonic acid 22
Iodine 126 Boracic acid 24
Bromine 78.3 Acetic acid 51
Fluorine 18.7 Tartaric acid 66
Cyanogen 26 Citric acid 58
Sulphuric acid 40 Oxalic acid 36
Selenic acid 64 Sulphur (?) 16
Nitric acid 54 Selenium (?)
Chloric acid 75.5 Sulpho-cyanogen
CATIONS
Hydrogen 1 Calcium 20.5
Potassium 39.2 Magnesium 12.7
Sodium 23.3 Manganese 27.7
Lithium 10 Zinc 32.5
Barium 68.7 Tin 57.9
Strontium 43.8 Lead 103.5

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