Definite Electrolytic Action, "with different-sized Electrodes. 17? 



then repeated, using batteries sometimes containing forty, and 

 at other times only five pairs of plates; but the results were 

 still the same. Variations therefore in the intensity, caused by 

 difference in the strength of charge, or in the number of al- 

 ternations used, produced no difference as to the equal action of' 

 large and small electrodes. 



724. Still these results did not prove that variation in the 

 intensity of the current was not accompanied by a corre- 

 sponding variation in the electro-chemical effects, since the 

 actions at all the surfaces might have increased or diminished 

 together. The deficiency in the evidence is, however, com- 

 pletely supplied by the former experiments on different- 

 sized electrodes ; for with variation in the size of these, a va- 

 riation in the intensity must have occurred. The intensity of 

 an electric current traversing conductors alike in their nature, 

 quality* and length, is probably as the quantity of electricity 

 passing through a given sectional area perpendicular to the 

 current, divided by the time (360. note) ; and therefore when 

 large plates were contrasted with wires separated by an equal 

 length of the same decomposing conductor (71 4.), whilst one 

 current of electricity passed through both arrangements, that 

 electricity must have been in a very different state, as to ten- 

 sion 9 between the plates and between the wires ; yet the che- 

 mical results were the same. 



725. The difference in intensity, under the circumstances 

 described, may be easily shown practically, by arranging two 

 decomposing apparatus as in fig. 12, where the same fluid is 

 subjected to the decomposing power of the same current of 

 electricity, passing in the vessel A between large platina 

 plates, and in the vessel B between small wires. If a third 

 decomposing apparatus, such as that delineated fig. 11. (7H.)j 

 be connected with the wires at ab 9 fig. 12, it will serve suffi- 

 ciently well, by the degree of decomposition occurring in it, 

 to indicate the relative state of the two plates as to intensity ; 

 and if it then be applied in the same way, as a test of the state 

 of the wires at a' b\ it will, by the increase of decomposition 

 within, show how much greater the intensity is there than at 

 the former points. The connexions of P and N with the vol- 

 taic battery are of course to be continued during the whole 

 time. 



726. A third form of experiment in which difference of in- 

 tensity was obtained, for the purpose of testing the principle 

 of equal chemical action, was to arrange three volta-electro- 

 meters, so that after the electric current had passed through 

 one, it should divide into two parts, which, after traversing 

 each one of the remaining instruments, should reunite. The 



Third Scries. Vol. 5. No. 27. Sept. 1834. 2 A 



