310 Scientific Intelligence. 
SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE. 
I. CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS. 
1. Water not an Electrolyte.—The books have long taught that 
the object of adding an acid, in the electrolysis of water, is to 
render it a conductor. The fact that compound substances when 
decomposable conduct only by electrolysis, and hence, that a 
body not an electrolyte cannot be made so by the addition of 
another body, has long rendered it probable that it is the acid 
which is actually decomposed by the current, and that the water 
suffers decomposition only by a secondary action. Boureory has 
investigated the subject experimentally, and has proved that 
acid, and the current is passed for a given time, the hydrogem 
being collected. Whenth ant a Concluded: the contenmen 
hydrogen equal to 3" It is therefore certain that it is not H,S0, 
which is decomposed, but H,SO,+(H,0O),, or H,SO,. Two 
hypotheses may be offered to as this Ma» tes 1) Both the 
be and the acid are decomposed by the current, but success 
ively: 
Positive electrode. Negative electrode. 
H,SO, = (S0,+0)+........ H, ; 
(H, 0), — O ee eee ee ee ee Be 
or (2) The current decomposes a definite compound having the 
formula SO,(H,0O).,, or H.SO, : 
H(80, = 180 4-0) 46306 ss 
Facts show the second supposition to be the true one. Operating, 
for example, with currents ing intensity, upon liquids com 
t H “ 
to H,SO,+125aq,, it is found that the ratio of the acid decom 
posed to the hydrogen evolved is always that above given; whic 
would not be the case, in all probability, were the acid and water 
separately electrolyzed. Moreover, the compound H,SO, 18 not 
