MarcH 15, 1912] 
J. E. Miuus: Force. 
Elasticity is a property very similar to tempera- 
ture, depending upon the motion of certain parts 
of larger elastic bodies. When these fundamental 
particles collide they simply exchange velocities 
instantaneously. Neither motion nor energy is for 
a fraction of a second lost. 
The usual definition of force is: ‘‘A unit force 
is that force which, acting on a mass of one gram 
for one second, will give to it a velocity of one 
centimeter per second.’? In a medium when the 
particles exchange their velocities instantaneously 
this definition of force does not apply, as the 
words ‘‘for one second’’ have no meaning. More 
important is the fact that the kinetic energy of a 
moying body must then be measured by its mass 
(probably amount of matter) times its velocity, 
instead of by one half its mass times the square 
of its velocity. 
The term ‘‘attractive force’’ has been applied 
to chemical, molecular, gravitational, electrical and 
magnetic attractions. Some in consequence of our 
definition of force have invested these phenomena 
with attributes which they do not possess. 
W. E. Henperson: A Jacket for a Victor Meyer 
Apparatus. 
The usual form of glass jacket is replaced by a 
beaker deep enough to contain the bulb of the 
inner tube. The beaker is covered with a copper 
sheet in the center of which is a circular hole 
large enough for the insertion of the bulb. Con- 
centric with this hole is a deep groove in the cover 
in which the square end of a piece of large glass 
tubing rests in a water seal (a broken outer jacket 
eut square will serve). The beaker should have no 
lip. 
W. E. HenpDERSON and H. B. WEISER: The Action 
of Sulphurous Acid upon the Sulphides of Iron 
and Manganese. 
When freshly prepared sulphides of iron or 
manganese are treated with sulphurous acid the 
primary action appears to be the production of 
the metallic sulphites and hydrosulphurie acid. 
The sulphites are held in solution as acid salts, 
and are precipitated as normal salts on warming 
the solution. The interaction of sulphur dioxide 
and hydrosulphurie acid produces free sulphur 
which converts a portion of the sulphites into 
thiosulphates. These have been isolated in pure 
form. Contrary to the statements in the literature, 
there is no dithionate or tetrathionate formed 
beyond possibly a mere trace. 
SCIENCE 
433 
R. F. Brunet: The Equilibrium between Iso and 
Tertiary Butyl Bromides. 
Cuas. T. P. FENNEL: A Strange Substance in 
Iodine. 
A. S. McDaniEL: Chemistry of the Silver Volt- 
ameter. 
CHas. A. Kraus and Wm. C. Bray: A General 
Law of Ionization of Binary Electrolytes. (Pre- 
sented by Wm. C. Bray.) 
From a preliminary examination of the existing 
conductance data in various solvents the first 
named author four years ago suggested the rela- 
tion 
(Cy)? 
ca—v7) 
where © is the concentration, y the degree of 
ionization calculated from the conductance ratio 
A/A,, and K, D, m are constants. A more careful 
study, which is still in progress, has furnished 
striking confirmations of this law. The evidence 
that the law of mass action is obeyed in dilute 
solutions is based on the experimental results of 
Franklin and Kraus in liquid ammonia and of 
Dutoit and his coworkers in propyl, butyl and 
amylalcohols and in acetone, sulfur dioxide, pyri- 
dine, ete. There is a rough parallelism between 
the values of K for a typical salt (as Nal) and 
the di-electrie constants of the pure solvents. The 
deviations from the law of mass action are in gen- 
eral appreciable when the ion concentration is 
greater than 0.0005 normal. The values of m 
usually lie between 0.4 and 0.6 in aqueous solution 
and between 0.9 and 1.2 in liquid ammonia and 
are still larger in solvents of lower di-electric con- 
stants. Whenever m is greater than 1, the values 
of the equivalent conductance pass through a 
minimum as the concentration increases and then 
increase with increasing concentration. D is the 
controlling factor in determining y at high ion 
concentration, and usually lies between 0.1 and 
5.0 for the different solvents. The above law 
ceases to hold in the neighborhood of normal con- 
centration, and A then decreases with increasing 
concentration. There is evidence that this de- 
erease is connected with the rapidly increasing 
viscosity of these concentrated solutions. 
= K + D(Cy)m, 
Harry N. Hotmes: The Detection of Ozone. 
The paper presented the various theories ex- 
plaining the presence of ozone in nature and gave 
the results of six months’ ozone tests in outdoor 
air. In June and July the quickest response to a 
starch potassium-iodide test was an hour and a 
