30 



Notes from the Chemical Laboratory of the 



Presidency College, 



Note No, 4»~The Electrical State of Nascent Gases 



A Preliminary Note. 



By J. A, Cunningham, Professor of Chemisiry^ and Satish 

 Chandra Mukerji, Government Research Scholar^ 



Presidency College^ Calcutta. 



One of the moat attractive problems of modern Chemistry 

 is involved in the effort to explain chemical combination in the 

 light of the recent developments of our knowledge of Electricity 

 aud its atomic structure. Speculations have been very rife, and 

 direct experiments vei^y rare. We have hoped to be able to ob- 

 tain some information on the subject by a direct investigation of 

 the electrical condition of gases just after their liberation from 

 chemical compounds. 



A number of early observers have experimented on the elec- 

 trical phenomena associated with chemical combination and de- 

 composition ; but the true interpretation of their observations is 

 involved in some uncertainty. In the light of J. J. Thomson's 

 exposition of the nature of electricity, Townsend ^ determined the 

 resultant electrification of hydrogen and oxygen liberated by the 

 electrolysis of dilute sulphuric acid and potassium hydrate solu- 

 tions, and of hydrogen and chlorine from the electrolysis of hy- 

 drochloric acid. From sulphuric acid both gases carried away a 

 positive charge ; from potassium hydrate a negative charge ; and 

 from hydrochloric acid the hydrogen carried a variable positive 

 and the chlorine a small negative charge. Townsend's method of 

 measurement was to connect a flask into which the charged gas 

 was made to carry a cloud, with one pair of quadrants of an elec- 

 trometer. He therefore only measured the excess of one kind of 

 electricity over the other. His object was primarily to study the 

 formation of clouds, and the properties of electrified gases as 

 such. The understanding of the bearing of his results on the 

 nature of chemical combination is complicated by the uncertainty 

 as to the exact nature of the chemical reactions involved in the 

 genesis of the gases in solutions, and, still further, by doubts as to 

 the electrical effects superimposed by the processes of bubbling 

 them through these, and certain other purifying liquids. 

 ^ The experimetits described in the present paper have been de- 

 signed to be directly applicable to the simplest possible chemical 

 reactions, and to the measurement of the total number of both 



1 Proc, Cambr. Phil. Soc. ix. 1897, 244, & 1898, 345. & Phil. Mag. v. 1898. 

 p. 45. 



