On some Chemical Age?icies of Electric'ify. 22^ 



Whenever bodies brought by artificial means into a high 

 state of opposite electricities arc made to restore the equili- 

 brium, heat and light are the common consequences. It is 

 perhaps an additional circumstance, in favour of the theory t 

 to state, that heat and light are likewise the result of all in- 

 tense chemical action. And as in certain forms of the 

 Voltaic battery, where large quantities of electricity of low 

 intensity act, heat is produced without light ; so in slow 

 combinations there is an increase of temperature without lu- 

 minous appearance. 



The efiect of heat, in producing combination, may be 

 easily explained according to these ideas. It not only often 

 gives more freedom of motion to the particles, but in a num- 

 ber of cases it seems to exalt the electrical energies of bo- 

 dies ; glass, the tourmalin, sulphur, all afford familiar in- 

 stances of this last species of energy. 



I heated together an insulated plate of copper and a pl.^te 

 of sulphur, and examined their electricities as their tem- 

 perature became elevated : these electricities, scarcely sen-- - 

 sible at 56° Fahrenheit to the condensing electrome;er, be- 

 came at 100° Fahrenheit capable of affecting the gold leaves, 

 without condensation ; they increased in a still higher ratio 

 as the sulphur a[)proached towards its point of fusion. At a 

 little above this point, as is well known from the experi- 

 ments of the Dutch chemists, the two substances rapidly 

 combine, and heal and light are evident. 



Sin}ilar effects may be conceived to occur in the case of 

 oxygen and hydrogen, which form water, a body apparently 

 neutral in electrical energy to most other substances ; aiid 

 we may reasonably conclude that there is the same cxaltu- 



the eighth of an inch in breadth. The saline soUition filled a li.ilf ounce mea- 

 sure, .ind the distance beiweeii the s-.Jution and the water, at botli points of 

 communication, was a quarter of an inch. I mention these circumstances be- 

 cause the quantity of fluid and the extent of surface irtaierially influence the 

 result in trials of this kind. W.iler included in glass syplioiis f(/nns a much less 

 perfect ccnductinjj chain than when difluscd upon the surface of librous no.'j- 

 cdnd'-.cting substances of much sm;:ll<~r volume than the diameter of the sv. 

 phons. I .'(ttcmptcd to emi)loy sy[ihcii!. in sonic of my first c;;pprimeiits ; but 

 thr very great inferiority of eflect as compared with that of amiaiithus made 

 irc al!0[;i''.iicr relinquish the use of ihi'iii. 



tion 



