METALLIC WIRES BY ELECTRICITY. 461 
Number Quantity of 
of jars. electricity. 
5* 12. The wire is brightly incandescent. 
14 Distorted—broken off. 
15 Torn into three pieces. 
iy Melted into globules. 
(The battery was insulated immediately after the discharge.) 
12 The wire is shivered to pieces. 
After this preliminary experiment, the quantity of electricity 
could be so chosen that in the one wire first incandescence and 
then fusion, in the other immediate fusion should take place ; 
and as the battery was insulated immediately after the destruc- 
tion of the first wire, the quantity of electricity retained in it 
could be made to assist in the fusion of the second wire. In 
order to shorten the time between the two fusions, both the wires 
were fixed in one of the clamps at the same time, whilst. into the 
other clamp first the end of the one wire was introduced and 
then the end of the second. 
Experiment 43.— 
Number Quantity of 
of jars. electricity. 
5% 13 The first wire is brightly incandescent. 
17 It is melted into globules. 
13 The second wire is melted into globules. 
This experiment was repeated twice with the same result. 
For the complete fusion of these wires, the quantity of elec- 
tricity 17 was therefore necessary; as after the first fusion the 
addition of the quantity 13 sufficed to produce this effect, there 
must have remained in the battery after the first fusion the 
quantity of electricity 4, or nearly 0°23 of the whole charge. 
This residue appears very large, even when notice is not taken 
of the fact, that the discharge took place through a perfect 
metallic connexion of the two surfaces. When the discharge 
was made at the principal discharging distance, in which case 
the connecting circuit was interrupted by a stratum of air, this 
battery retained, as I discovered by former experiments*, only 
75, or 0°15 of the whole quantity of electricity. The consider- 
ably greater residue in the present case shows therefore that the 
continuity of the platina wire must have been. destroyed before 
complete discharge at that distance could occur, and that this 
destruction of continuity must therefore have taken place in a 
* Poggendorff’s Aunalen, vol. liii. p. 11, 
