REPORT OF EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. IO9 



There has been developed simultaueously a system of laboratory 

 heating by means of electricity which is believed to possess decided 

 advantages over the methods in ordinary use. An account of the 

 results obtained in this direction has been given, with the consent 

 of the Carnegie Institution, in the American Chemical Journal, vol. 

 xxxii, under the title "A New Electric Furnace and Various Other 

 Electric Heating Appliances for I^aboratory Use." 



A. A. Noyes, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Grant No. 45. 

 For researches upon : (i) Electrical conductivity of salts in aqiie- 

 ous solution at high temperatures ; (.?) Ionization of weak acids 

 and bases and hydrolysis of their salts in aqueous solution at high 

 teinperat^ires ; (j) Transference determinations in aqiieous solu- 

 tio7is of acids. %\ ,000. 



Abstract of Report. — These three researches have been carried out 

 during the past year in the Research Laboratory of Physical Chem- 

 istry of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The first was 

 executed with the assistance of Mr. Arthur C. Melcher ; the second 

 with that of Dr. Hermon C. <^ooper ; and the third with that of Mr. 

 Yogoro Kato. The work upon all these investigations has progressed 

 so far that three articles describing the methods and results will soon 

 be submitted to the Carnegie Institution for publication. 



The first investigation on the electrical conductivity of aqueous 

 solutions at high temperatures has consisted thus far in the meas- 

 urement of the conductivity of six salts — sodium chloride, potassium 

 chloride, silver nitrate, barium nitrate, potassium sulphate, and mag- 

 nesium sulphate — at the four temperatures of 18°, 100°, 156°, and 

 218°, and at the four concentrations of -j^, -^, -g^, and --^ normal. 

 The apparatus and the method employed were nearly identical with 

 those described by Noyes & Coolidge.* The measurements with 

 potassium and sodium chloride were to some extent a repetition of 

 those of these investigators ; they were made in order to estimate 

 the probable accuracy of the results, which could well be done, since 

 the new determinations were made by another experimenter in an 

 entirely new apparatus of a different resistance-capacity. The new 

 results even at 218° agreed with the old ones within 0.2 per cent. 

 The results obtained with all these salts justifj^ the conclusions : 

 (i) That the degree of dissociation always decreases greatly with 

 rise of temperature ; (2) that this decrease is much larger for salts 

 of the uni-bivalent type than for those of the uni-univalent type, 



*Proc. Am. Acad. Arts and Sciences, jp, 163 (1903). 



