The Liter (dure of Ozone. L43 



I regarded this experiment as demonstrating the existence of 

 atomic oxygen as prior to, and necessary to, the production of 

 both carbon dioxide and ozone. In other words, that equations 

 (2) and (3) represented the true sequence and coordination of the 

 phenomena, and not equation (1). 



Three years subsequently, Baumann repeated this experiment 

 (Ber. der deutsch. Chem. Gesell., XIV, 2706), and obtained the 

 same result. These results having been questioned by Remsen 

 and Keiser (Amer. Chem. Jour., IV, 454) on the ground of their 

 having obtained a negative result, I repeated my original experi- 

 ment with air and carbon monoxide over moist phosphorus, every 

 source of error being rigorously guarded against, and obtained 

 even larger amounts of carbon dioxide than in my earlier investi- 

 gation, — in one case 15.5 mgrm. Since that time, Baumann 

 has likewise repeated the experiment, and obtained in one trial, 

 23.3 mgrm. carbon dioxide, in another case 64.6 mgrms. 



The atomation of oxygen, and the setting free of atomic oxy- 

 gen, as a step necessarily antecedent to the formation of ozone, 

 has therefore, I conclude, been established by rigorous experi- 

 mental proof. In the case of the electric effluve, the intervening 

 oxygen dielectric undergoes polarization, and a certain number of 

 its molecules are decomposed into atoms. Certain of these atoms 

 recombine among themselves, or combine with the oxygen mole- 

 cules, to form ozone, the amount of the ozone produced depend- 

 ing upon the strength of the electric effluve, upon the duration 

 of electrification, the temperature, presence of foreign gases or 

 vapors admixed with the gaseous electrolyte, and the other condi- 

 tions of the experiments. 



If the atomation of the oxygen be brought about by the reduc- 

 tion of the oxygen molecule by means of phosphorus, partly 

 covered by water, there will be formed by the atomic oxygen 

 thus produced, ozone, hydrogen peroxide, and ammonium nitrate. 

 If ammonium nitrite is produced, as an intermediary step, it is not 

 found in the final products. These three substances, as I have al- 

 ways insisted since the publication of the investigation upon which 

 the statement is based (Jour. Amer. Chem. Soc, 1879, Vol. 1, 150), 

 are three necessarily associated bodies, all secondary in their 

 genesis, and dependent upon the previous formation of atomic 



