191 1.] HINRICHS— ATOMIC WEIGHT OF VANADIUM. 213 



can be determined and that this value also will remain unaffected in 

 all reactions ; and so forth. That errors rapidly accumulate in such 

 an irrational process, we have shown as far back as 1893, almost 

 twenty years ago. That paper was presented by Berthelot to the 

 Academy of Sciences of Paris and published in its Co/n/'/^^i?(';;rf»^.^^ 



After having completed a thorough examination of all the atomic 

 weight determinations made, we have, by a sort of crucial test, dem- 

 onstrated that the present value Ag 107.88, implying a departure of 

 120 thousandths, is impossible; that O 16 requires Ag 108 exactly, 

 according to all determinations made during an entire century in all 

 the laboratories of the world." 



It is this same principle that is demonstrated by the diagrams 

 here printed and this demonstration is made visible to the eye : It is 

 not vanadium alone that causes the error affecting the laboratory 

 work, but all elements in the reaction contribute to the error recog- 

 nized in the final result of the analytical work. 



Instead of the common notion that the work of the different 

 chemists conflicts in the different values they have presented as the 

 results of their determination of the atomic weight of vanadium our 

 figures here inserted show to the eye that all determinations made 

 agree in the common result of J'a fji exactly. While no experimental 

 work of any kind,' done by man, with instruments and by chemical 

 reactions, all of which are but approximations to a mathematical 

 perfection, can be expected to give perfectly exact results, we have 

 proved that the final error cannot be ascribed to vanadium alone, as 

 continues to be done by the dominant school, but that on the contrary, 

 all the elements present in a reaction contribute, each one its share, 

 to the Excess or deficiency resulting. It was therefore necessary to 

 find the laws regulating this participation of the different elements 

 in the errors of the reactions and of the entire experimental work. 

 Having discovered these laws, we have applied them here, to the 

 atomic weight determinations made for vanadium and present in the 

 two graphics (Figs, i and 2 ) the final results thus obtained. 



These figures show plainly that all the departures from the abso- 



^=T. 116, p. 695. 



''* See paper read December 2, 1910, before the American Philosophical 

 Society; Proceedings, 1910, pp. 359-363. 



