544 HINRICHS— TRUE ATOMIC WEIGHT OF BROMINE. [April 4, 



the laboratory work done is not correct but false in principle and 

 erroneous in its results. 



Very naturally the dominant school has first denounced my work 

 and thereafter ignored the same; nevertheless it has been compelled 

 to admit the existence of grave errors in the results of Stas which 

 had been extolled to be of astronomical precision. This applies 

 especially to the most famous of the fundamental determinations of 

 Stas, namely those of Ag and N. For nitrogen, Stas gave the value 

 14.044 exactly. By a marvelous series of decimals (from 38 to 375 

 places furnished him by A. Ouetelet) he declared the lowest possible 

 value to be 14.040; at present, the school of Stas has come down to 

 14.008 which is one fifth of the lowest possible value of Stas and 

 only 8 thousandths above the value we believe to have proved to be 

 the true value, namely 14 exactly^ For silver the value of Stas has 

 been reduced by his school from 107.930 to 107.880, which is a 

 reduction of fifty thousandths. It must be borne in mind that this 

 matter is a question of high precision, questioning the thousandths 

 of the unit of atomic weights. 



All the above values refer to the oxygen standard in common 

 use, = 16 exactly, for which we believe to have proved that Ag 

 is 108 exactly and Br 80 exactly. Hence the present values of the 

 dominant school would be 0.120 low for Ag, i. e., o.ii per cent, of 

 108; and 0.076 low for Br, i. e., o.io per cent, of 80. 



If our results are correct, the dominant school is one tenth of 

 one per cent, lozc on the atomic weight of these two fundamental 

 elements. 



Accordingly, if our work be true, all the quantitative chemical 

 analyses made in the chemical laboratories throughout the world, 

 from the lowest technical to the highest scientific institutions, have 

 for half a century been falsified (unintentionally, of course, but de 

 facto) to the extent of one tenth of one per cent, for both silver and 

 bromine determinations. For lithium, the error committed is now 

 fully one per cent. 



4 The experiments of Guye and his students at Geneva are claimed to 

 prove N = 14.008 ; but each set of determinations has been made within very 

 narrow limits and with small weights at that, except those of 1912, which 

 positively prove N = 14.000, as I have shown (Comptes Rendus, May 6, 

 1812; T. 154, p. 1227). 



