CHEMISTRY 



93 



natural view to take, as a provisional hypothesis, is that mat- 

 ter is just a collection of positive and negative units of elec- 

 tricity, and that the forces which hold atoms and molecules 

 together, the properties which differentiate one kind of matter 

 from another, all have their origin in the electrical forces 

 exerted by positive and negative units of electricity, grouped 

 together in different ways in the atoms of different elements. 

 As it would seem that the units of positive and negative elec- 

 tricity are of very different sizes, we must regard matter as 

 a mixture containing systems of very different types, one type 

 corresponding to the small corpuscle, the other to the large 

 positive unit. 



Since the energy associated with a given charge is greater 

 the smaller the body on which the charge is concentrated, 

 the energy stored up in the negative corpuscles will be far 

 greater than that stored up by the positive. The amount of 

 energy stored up in ordinary matter is not generally realized. 

 All substances give out corpuscles, so that we may assume 

 that each atom of a substance contains at least one corpuscle. 

 From the size and the charge on the corpuscle, both of which 

 are known, each corpuscle has 8 x 1O 7 ergs of energy; this 

 on the supposition that the usual expressions for the energy 

 on a charged body hold when, as in the case of a corpuscle, 

 the charge is reduced to one unit. Now in one gram of hydro- 

 gen there are about 6 x 10 23 atoms, so that if there is only 

 one corpuscle in each atom the energy due to the corpuscles 

 in one gram of hydrogen would be 48 x 10 16 ergs or 11 x 10 7 

 calories. This is more than seven times the heat developed by 

 one gram of radium or than that developed by the burning of 

 five tons of coal. Thus we see that "even ordinary matter con- 

 tains enormous stores of energy ; this energy is fortunately kept 

 enormous stores of energy; this energy is fortunately kept 

 fast bound by the corpuscles ; if at any time an appreciable 

 fraction were to get free the earth would explode and become 

 a gaseous nebula. 



