PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND AFFILIATED 



SOCIETIES 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON 



The 784th meeting was held at the Cosmos Club, February 17, 1917, 

 President Buckingham in the chair; 69 persons present. The minutes 

 of the 783rd meeting were read in abstract and approved. 



By invitation, Mr. H. Bateman presented an illustrated paper on 

 The nature of chemical forces. Sir Joseph J. Thomson's idea 1 of regard- 

 ing chemical bonds as symbols for Faraday tubes may be developed 

 successfully by considering solutions of Maxwell's electromagnetic 

 equations in which the electric and magnetic forces become infinite 

 on moving singular curves. 



We must first of all try to understand the nature of potential energy 

 and so we shall commence by studying the properties of a type of radiant 

 field with singular lines starting from the origin and running in both 

 directions along the axis of z. The electric force E and the magnetic 

 force H being specified by expressions of type 



H x +iE x =f{a,^^V) 



H y +iE y =f(a,p) 



d (y, z) 



d (a, 0) 



d fo x) (l) 



where a = t - -, = log x+iy j r °- = x 2 + y 2 + z 2 



it is easy to see that there is a radial flow of energy outward from the 

 origin. The origin may be regarded as a source or singular point 

 at which neutral particles are continually breaking up into oppositely 

 charged fragments which travel along the axis of z in opposite direc- 

 tions with the velocity of light. 



Two neighboring sources and 0' whose singular lines overlap can 

 produce radiant fields which interfere with one another in such a way 

 that in the total field the only singularities lie in the interval 00'. 

 This can be seen very readily by differentiating the expressions (1) 



1 The corpuscular theory of matter. Constable, London (1907). Phil. Mag., 

 May. 1914. 



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