CHEMISTRY 97 



puscle than elsewhere. The mass of the system will be prac- 

 tically independent of the position of its positive end and will 

 be approximately the mass of the corpuscles if alone in the 

 field. 



These electrical doublets will unite into groups of two to 

 be followed by aggregates containing a large number of elec- 

 trical doublets. An aggregate of this kind may be pictured 

 as consisting of a sphere of uniform positive electrification 

 and that the very much smaller negatively electrified corpus- 

 cles are moving about inside it. The number of corpuscles 

 is the number of units which had gone to make up the aggre- 

 gate, and the total negative electrification on the corpuscles 

 is equal to the positive electrification on the sphere. This 

 aggregate is an atom of a chemical element "formed by n 

 corpuscles and n units of positive electricity which is in equi- 

 librium or in a state of steady motion under the electrical 

 forces which the charged 2n constituents exert upon each 

 other." 



In many cases the motion is essential to the stability of 

 the configuration. The corpuscles rotate around the center of 

 the sphere like a spinning top, the top like the corpuscles be- 

 ing unstable unless its velocity of rotation exceeds a certain 

 critical value. Suppose that initially the velocity of the cor- 

 puscles exceeds this value; now suppose the velocity to be 

 reduced to a point where the configuration becomes unstable ; 

 when this velocity is reached instability sets in and there is a 

 kind of convulsion or explosion, accompanied by a great di- 

 minution in the potential energy and a corresponding increase 

 in the kinetic energy of the corpuscles. This increase in the 

 kinetic enery of the corpuscles may be sufficient to detach 

 considerable numbers of them from the original assemblage. 

 It would cause the atom to emit energy. This increase in the 

 kinetic energy of the corpuscles may cause the disruption of 

 the atom into two or more systems, corresponding to the emis- 



