AND SCHONBEIN 29 



to effect electrolysis, when, for example, it cannot 

 decompose potassium iodide. 



There is, however, another fact that I have dis- 

 covered, which I wish particularly to recommend to 

 your attention, and it is one which I think can 

 hardly fail to excite the interest of chemist and 

 physicist alike. It is the capacity which every 

 compound liquid conductor (electrolyte) possesses of 

 becoming electrically polarized. 



The following facts will serve to bear out my 

 assertion. Fill a U-shaped tube with chemically 

 pure hydrochloric acid; put a platinum wire into 

 each limb, and connect these wires for a few seconds 

 with the poles of a battery whose current is too 

 feeble to produce on the electrodes the smallest trace 

 of gas. Now remove the wires from the tube, and 

 replace them by another pair of platinum wires which 

 have not been subjected to the action of a current ; 

 finally, connect these wires with a galvanometer of 

 several thousand turns. Under these circumstances 

 the needle of the galvanometer will be deflected in 

 such a direction as to indicate a current flowing from 

 the limb into which the negative electrode dipped to 

 that which was connected with the positive pole ; in 

 other words, the former limb of the tube behaves as 

 if it were positive to the latter. This fact makes it 

 obvious that the electrode and the column of liquid 

 directly in contact with it are both electrically 

 polarized at the same time and in the same sense by 

 the current which traverses them. As my work on 

 this subject will soon be published in Poggendorff's 



