110 Prof. Norton on Molecular Physics. 



In developing the theory of the voltaic current, let us confine 

 our attention to the case of a single cell, consisting of water, or 

 acidulated water, between a plate of zinc and a plate of copper. 

 We must suppose that the first effect is a mutual polarizing 

 action between a molecule of zinc and one of oxygen, the former 

 being brought into the positive state, and the latter into the 

 negative state, upon the contiguous surfaces. The attraction 

 thus developed will arrange the oxygen, with its associate hy- 

 drogen-molecule, on a line normal to the surface of the zinc plate. 

 The further surface of the molecule of hydrogeu will be brought 

 to the same positively polarized state as the zinc plate, and will 

 act in a similar manner upon the next particle of water ; and so 

 on from one particle to another until a complete chain of polar- 

 ized molecules extends to the copper plate. 



In this chain, as first established, we regard each particle of 

 oxygen as in the negative state on the side nearest to the zinc, 

 and each associate particle of hydrogen as in the positive state on 

 its further side, or at least that they are brought essentially into 

 this condition, and that the true polarization of the contiguous 

 sides is comparatively feeble, by reason of the conducting com- 

 munication between them, resulting from the condensed state of 

 the electric aether by which they are electrically connected (p. 99). 

 Not only does the positive repulsion that originates at the zinc 

 plate establish, by induction, a chain of polarized water-particles, 

 in which the further or hydrogen side is in the same positive 

 state as the zinc, but it also tends to increase the density of the 

 electric sether posited between the oxygen and hydrogen of the 

 individual water-particles of this chain, and so to urge them 

 asunder*. Before the closing of the circuit, while the mutual 

 polarizing action between the zinc and oxygen is in continual 

 operation, waves of positive electricity spread in an indefinite 



water, we must regard the molecule of hydrogen that combines with a 

 molecule of oxygen as compound, and composed of two simple molecules 

 (p. 99, fig. 5) ; but this in no degree affects the explanation to be given ; 

 for the compound molecule, as it is not decomposed, comports itself 

 throughout essentially as a simple molecule would under like circumstances. 

 It is to be observed that the process of polarization above considered does 

 not occasion an excess of electric aether upon the entire molecule of the one 

 substance, and a deficiency on the entire molecule of the other, since, when 

 a molecule becomes polarized, it absorbs upon the one side the same amount 

 of electric aether that it gives off from the other side (p. 100). 



In all these remarks the term molecule is used in the same sense as 

 heretofore. 



* If the constituent molecules of each water-particle were not in con- 

 ducting communication, then the action transmitted along the line would 

 serve to polarize these molecules, and thus to bind them more closely rather 

 than to separate them. This objection seems to hold against Schonbein's 

 theory. 



